I am not smart enough to challenge Mr. Weiss on tactics, strategies, etc., but I am guessing that I can't be the only one with a nagging sense that what we have here is a failure to democracate (it's the "truthiness" of 2007 people, start dropping it).

There are numerous columns as to why the surge will fail, and a handful of what can be gained, of which this seems the most coherent and rational. Ultimately though, doesn't it boil down to the fact that our entire adventures in Iraq have been boiled down to securing Baghdad. The falsities and equivocations as to why we went to Iraq in the first place will be hashed by historians (and subcommittees) into perpetuity, but securing Baghdad is a galaxy far, far, away from the potentially noble ideal of setting up a stable democracy in the Middle East.

Rudy Guiliani's connection between his administration's succesful policing techniques in New York City and the surge sounds facile (I for one never considered the crack dealers on the corner an insurgency), but there seems to be truth in the idea that this is NYPD Blue in Humvees. Weiss breaks it down in almost Compstat terms, flooding the hot zones in South Karahdah instead of the South Bronx, and once and for all ridding the Green Zone of squegee men. I sincerely hope that Weiss is right that the "augmentation" could ultimately save lives, but I still can't get beyond the basic precept that even post-9/11, the average American (and the above-average-Americans with actual family members in Iraq) would have signed on to a mission that has been reduced to an extremely violent and dangerous precinct patrol.

I, of course, have no answers. Leaving Iraq to fend for itself seems morally corrupt, but no moreso than hanging tough in carnage central. Securing Baghdad is massively important -- and ideally worthwhile -- but even if it works, the surge isn't exactly going to find people kissing in the heart of now-safe-for-all-fans-of-Wicked-and-Bubba-Gump-shrimp-Times-Square on VE Day now is it.

--Patrick J. Sauer