ee cummings would be proud.  No caps (except Hemmingway, oddly enough), random line breaks, and total nonsense.  Basically you're saying "If you oppose war, you can talk about it.  If you think war's being done correctly, you can't talk unless you've fought."  What a great technique to stack the ranks of critics and depelete the supporters.  Seriously, Michael's on a limb enough here.  Give him a break, brave anonymous poster.  Fight ideas with ideas.  Better that we not try to figure this out?

In all seriousness, I've never been a "pull out now" liberal, much to the chagrin of my Vietnam-prostesting father.  Ignoring sunk costs, there is a bloody hole in the Middle East, we have troops there, and we have moral responsibility to do something about it (the pottery barn law of international relations). We have moral responsibilities to do a lot of things in the world (Darfur?  Seriously guys - get on that) but we happen to be there, and this is the thread, so yes, I think we shouldn't just leave now and ask Assad & the Ayatollahs to take care of the mess.

You basically did  a forty times better job than Bush in explaining the power of the surge.  But there are two real problems.  One - Insurgents watch CNN Global.  They know this is temporary.  Why not just wait it out?  They lose something by allowing police to establish themselves, get trained, set up intelligence in various neighborhoods.  But it doesn't mean the insurgents get caught, lose their weapons, etc.  This won't eliminate the possibility that they'll just start a civil war in earnest once we leave.  Much like Hezbollah, post-Israeli withdrawl, they get a huge publicity bump when the US leaves, countering any loss they suffered by laying dormant.  Two - More importantly, Baghdad is not Tal Afar.  It is the seat of government, it is a substantially mixed city, and it has been through hell for the last 3 and a half years.  Insurgents may have been willing to let Tal Afar calm down, but Baghdad is the main event.  Just as we know that we must calm the city, the insurgents know that they must keep the city destabilized if they want to eventually establish their own brand of dictatorship (religious/ethnic/whatever) after the fact.

Do I have a better idea?  Not yet.  I'll keep you posted.