This week Congress was graced by the appearances of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who both testified as to the current state of affairs in Iraq. Much was made of the fact that all three presidential candidates got an opportunity to sit in the spotlight and question the General and Ambassador directly, as well as make proclamations as to their current stand on the matter. There were few surpises on that count: McCain came across as a cheerleader, Clinton a thoughtful, perhaps reluctant hawk, and Obama the most deeply grounded in reality (the war was a mistake; we’re making our fight with al Qaeda worse by persisting in Iraq).

There was no surpise that a familiar theme kept popping up during the discussion: whether or not the “Surge” was working, and whether or not current troop levels should be maintained. John McCain has made his support of the Surge the cornerstone of his national defense and foreign policy experience, and his pitch goes like this: “I supported the surge from the beginning. The surge is working. I supported a policy that is working, so therefore I am a smart and capable leader, worthy of your vote for President.”

Depending on how you measure “success,” McCain may be right when he says that the Surge is working. If one simply assesses American casualties combined with the overall levels violence in Iraq, there is some evidence to suggest that the Surge has contributed to these positive developments (although the fact that influencial cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered a ceasefire to his Mahdi Army in August 2007 may have made an equal, if not greater, impact on the levels of violence than the Surge itself).

On the other hand, if you measure success of the Surge as less of a function of bodycount and more of a function of real economics, there is an alternate view of the reality on the ground, explained in this interesting paper, in which MIT’s Michael Greenstone considers:

“the central question of whether the Surge has increased or diminished the prospect of today’s Iraq surviving into the future…[he] examine[s] the price of Iraqi state bonds, which the Iraqi government is currently servicing, on world financial markets. After the Surge, there is a sharp decline in the price of those bonds, relative to alternative bonds. The decline signaled a 40% increase in the market’s expectation that Iraq will default. This finding suggests that to date the Surge is failing to pave the way toward a stable Iraq and may in fact be undermining it.”

Examining the problem in Iraq from the perspective of real economics, rather than from platitudes and politics, is a refreshing view, yet neither of these views really address a true way out for America. Measuring success in Iraq by way of the Surge is a useless exercise because whether or not the Surge is working is really irrelevant to the actual quagmire we face.

In other words, assessing the Surge is a “false dilemma” that actually entraps those of us who attempt to consider it. For example, during the Democratic debates it became conventional wisdom that the Surge was working for the above reasons (diminished overall violence in Iraq). As this idea was now accepted as fact, questioners would pose a question similiar to the following to the candidates: “So you were against the Surge. Now that the Surge is working, doesn’t your lack of support for the Surge in the first place indicate your lack of expertise on how to best “win” the war in Iraq?”

Time and time again, the Democratic candidates would fall prey to this not so veiled attack, hemming and hawing on the question, feeling “had,” attempting to sidestep a chink in their armor. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, John McCain received multiple opportunities to look like a military and foreign policy genius when the issue of Iraq came up, pointing to the “success” of the Surge as an indicator of the “impending, inevitable” victory in Iraq.

My point about the irrelevance of the Surge can be explained succinctly by looking back at the roots of the problems we face in Iraq. Notwithstanding the blatantly obvious conclusion that the war was a mistaken idea, “planned” myopically, and executed incompetently, let’s exclude for a moment our reasons for going into the war, and instead focus on our strategy for achieving success. Early in the planning, it has been widely acknowledged that then Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shenseki called for much higher troop levels in the initial invasion. He called for nearly half a million. Rumsfeld and company denied that request and sent a paltry 150,000 soldiers or so, nearly ensuring the quagmire we currently face. (Oh by the way, they also fired Shenseki for his groundedness with reality. I personally met Shenseki on two occassions and can attest to his intelligence, charisma, and leadership. The first time was in 1987 when he was a full Colonel and assumed the command the 2nd Brigade of the Third Infantry Division from my father in Kitzingen, Germany. The second time I was a senior at West Point and had the pleasure of hosting him during his visit to the Academy when he was commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. It is arguable that if his advice were heeded, the current situation in Iraq would be immeasurably better, and possibly would no longer involved active engagment by US combat forces a full five years after the initial invasion).

Given that we sent in less than a third of the required forces to secure a country of 27 million people, it goes without saying that if we increase troop levels in Iraq that the security situation will improve. This is not rocket science. But merely improving the “security situation” does not solve our problems in Iraq. The most fundamental problems in Iraq are internal – concerning the relentless fighting between Sunnis and Shiites – followed by the fact that our presence is only emboldening the “resistance,” and will continue to do so until we either completely squash all opposition, which would involve a monumental increase in both troop levels and overall spending on the war, or massively reduce our presence entirely.

It is my belief that no one in Congress and no Presidential candidate truely possesses the courage and resolve to end this war on favorable terms. General William Tecumseh Sherman had it right when he opined that “War is Hell,” and proceeded to unleash unspeakable violence on the wayward Confederates states until they acquieced. The same holds true in Iraq. No positive solution will emerge through relatively minor troop increases that the Surge is all about. Sending an additional ten or twenty thousand soldiers to Iraq may quell some violence but will not solve the problem. If we truly want to “win” the war, we must initiate a draft, muster an army of at least half a million, and impose our will on an uncooperative Iraqi populace. It will cost many trillions of dollars and at least a half a decade.

Of course the alternative to this strategy is to abandon politically-fueled discussions about triffling troop increases and simply cut our losses and redeploy our forces from the region. Perhaps work in some political cooperation with the neighboring countries, and refocus our attention towards salvaging the situation in Afghanistan and battling the “real” al Qaeda, instead of “al Qaeda in Iraq,” which is more of a resistance group that an actual network of global terrorists, as we commonly purport al Qaeda to be.