Well, once again David Brooks has written a preposterous column basically stating that we had the war in Iraq all but won except (of course) for Obama. This echoes the know-nothing assertions of the neo-cons like Charles Krauthammer and the Senate wing led by John McCain, who still has hurt feelings that the American people chose Barack Obama instead of him.
Look...the surge wasn't really a surge. To the extent that it "succeeded" at all, it is because we started paying the Sunni militants to switch to our side for awhile. Once those payments stopped...well, anyone could have guessed. The frustrating thing is that Krauthammer and McCain know this but choose to create an alternate reality to serve their own political purposes. (Creating alternate realities seems to be the best Republicans can do nowadays.) The Iraq War was a disaster. The "surge" may have made it a bit less of a disaster, but a disaster nonetheless.
Of course, there are always revisionists (mostly from the right). It is common sport for them to come up with the latest reason that--just like the Iraq disaster--the Vietnam War was also ours to win, if only we had blah blah blah. Well, those of us who were around then know better. It was never our war to win. And we never should have gone into Iraq to begin with, either. Contrary to popular belief, there was never unanimity that we should have, except in the Bush White House and the press, including (especially?) The New York Times. And then, once we did invade, the Bush team totally botched it. David Brooks and the others can retroactively try to blame this on Obama (like they blame everything else on him). My conservative friends might buy it, but I think it's embarrassing and sad.
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