"The 'Surge' is working" part 2: "The 'Surge' worked."

I don’t believe in clairvoyance.  In fact, I don’t believe in superstition of any kind.  But I think I can see something coming.  I think I can see the grand strategy of the McCain campaign regarding foreign policy.  Listening closely (or maybe not even that closely) I can observe a pattern emerging.  Let me lay out what I think the next couple months of McCain tactics are going to look like after the median.

We have seen recently the shift in tone from both the John McCain and the Bush administration vis-à-vis the occupation of Iraq.  It seems that they are keen to spin the Malaki government request for U.S. troop withdrawal into a boon for the Bush legacy and the possibility of John McCain parking his wrinkly keister in the oval office.  This comes as no surprise to, well...anyone, but the reason for this diary is my hope that the best chance to render this angle ineffective is to preemptively dispel it as fallacy and prevent the Corporate MSM from swallowing this one like the previous myth of the initial success of the surge.

Barack Obama unknowingly did himself a great disservice by giving credence to the idea that the extra troops in theatre were the main cause of reduced violence in Iraq.  Despite the fact that he went on to say that the improvements were contingent on the troop levels and that we could not sustain the surge levels financially or militarily he nevertheless gave tacit permission to the pundit class to pronounce the "success of the surge."  

It is my opinion that troop levels have had only a small part in any perceived drop in violence in the country.  While I am in no way suggesting that American troops are incompetent or ineffectual, I feel that forced ethnic segregation as well as behind the scenes political dealing and the Moqtada al-Sadr Shiite Militia cease fire were larger factors, and the results feed the idea that the surge was working.  

For GWB, and eventually John McCain, this was a mission accomplished indeed.  As soon as this ‘fact’ was widely reported and absorbed into American consciousness then Barack Obama had an uphill climb ahead of him.  It has been shown in polls recently that Obama trails heavily to McCain on the question of who would be the best Commander-in-Chief.  McCain wants to play this Presidential campaign on this field, staying as far away from the economy question, where Obama holds the reciprocal advantage, as possible.

Here is the real trouble for Senator Obama now.  If John McLame and President Chimp are allowed to claim ‘victory’ in Iraq based on a ‘successful’ surge strategy then Barack Obama has trouble on the issue.  If he continues to advocate, as he should, that we extricate ourselves carefully from Iraq then McCain and Bush make it seem as though he was wrong all along because of the success of the strategy that he opposed, and the victory in the war he consistently calls a mistake.  McCain is attempting to paint Obama into a corner.  You can see this in his dismissal of Obama’s huge trip to Europe and Asia.  No matter how comprehensive this trip is, McCain can claim he’s been there more, and ask why Obama was making pronouncements about strategy there without having been there to assess the situation first hand.  This logic isn’t all that strong, but McCain’s ace in the hole is the possibility that the MSM and American public will swallow the meme that we have won the war and are on our way out (even if we wont be out by the election).  

So my main point, I guess, is that we must do everything we can to prevent the McSame campaign and the Bush administration from hijacking the credit for getting us out of Iraq be redefining our withdrawal as victory with honor because of the policy McCain supported and Obama opposed.  I am thrilled that we look to be moving toward withdrawal, but we can’t let this positive for the American people become a negative by letting McCain occupy the White House because of it.  We, as well as Obama, must not cede ground and let the start of the war fade into obscurity.  We must not let our friends and neighbors labor under the false impression that any success in Iraq was a result of well constructed strategy by either McCain or Bush.  Our troops have done everything we’ve asked of them, and Iraq is a sub-cutaneous civil war we should have never sent them to preside over.  

McCain said it would be a cake walk, then opposed Bush’s strategy after he saw everyone was against it, then supported the surge after everyone seemed to think it was working.  Don’t let him take credit for some perceived accomplishments in Iraq, and absolutely don’t let him use this perception to set us back in Afghanistan or run our country into the ground over the next four years.