Why the surge did not work

I've written before about how the surge has not actually worked, John McCain and media reports to the contrary.  But it is certainly a point that bears repeating, especially since McCain is running for president arguing about how he was right (and all the Democrats wrong) by saying the surge would and has worked.  Michael Kinsley has a recent column that makes the case for the failure of the surge as well as anything I've read on the matter.  The highlights:

What made the surge different from your ordinary troop deployment was
that it was temporary. In fact, the surge was presented as part of a
larger plan for troop withdrawal. It was also, implicitly, part of a
deal between Bush and the majority of the people in this country who
want out of Iraq. The deal was: Just let me have a few more soldiers to
get Baghdad under control, and then everybody, or almost everybody, can
pack up and come home.

In other words: You have to increase
the troops in order to reduce them. This is so perverse on its face
that it begins to sound Zen-like and brilliant, like something out of
Sun Tzu's “The Art of War.” And in Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the
U.S. commander.

It is now widely considered beyond dispute that Bush has won his
gamble. The surge was a terrific success. Choose your metric: attacks
on American soldiers, car bombs, civilian deaths, potholes. They're all
down, down, down. Lattes sold by street vendors are up. Performances of
Shakespeare by local repertory companies have tripled. Skepticism seems
like sour grapes. If you opposed the surge, you have two choices. One
is to admit that you were wrong, wrong, wrong. The other is to sound as
if you resent all the good news and remain eager for disaster. Too many
opponents of the war have chosen option two.

But we needn't
quarrel about all this — or deny the reality of the good news — to
say that, at the very least, the surge has not worked yet. The test is
simple and built into the concept of a surge: Has it allowed us to
reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started? And the
answer is no…

And consider how modest the administration's standard of success has
become. Can there be any doubt that it would go for a reduction to
100,000 troops — and claim victory — if it had any confidence at all
that the gains it brags about would hold at that level of support? The
proper comparison isn't with the situation a year ago. It's with the
situation before we got there.

Imagine that you had been told in 2003 that when George W. Bush finished his second term,
dozens of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis would be dying
violently every month; that a major American goal would be getting the
Iraqi government to temper its “de-Baathification” campaign so that
Saddam Hussein's former henchmen could start running things again
(because they know how); and “only” 100,000 American troops would be
needed to sustain this equilibrium.

You might have several words to describe this situation, but success would not be one of them.

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