Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
Are you implying that many voters hold views on issues that are ignorant or overly emotional and that politicians exploit that ignorance and excessive emoting by staking out positions that appeal to the lowest common denominator in order to win elections, rather than staking out positions that would be best for the country?
Stop the presses!

I agree with Rank Amateur that the Surge has become a hot-button issue that provokes some pretty heated responses from both sides of the issue. Most voter polls I've seen have phrased the question very simplistically: "Do you think the Surge has been a success?" Well, by what metric do we gauge success? Overall success in Iraq would be a stable, self-sufficient state with no great need of Coalition forces for security. But the Surge's aims, to me, seem more restrained: establishing security, so that political reconciliation may follow. That would be the watered down version. You can't have the latter before the former, in my opinion. And that is what I consider the Surge to be: not just an escalation of troops, or better operations through organizational learning, but mainly the stated aim that security be established before any other strategic objectives can be accomplished. In other words, more troops and better tactics are just the nuts and bolts of the Surge.

Now, I'm not a professional and I don't have any time in country, so my opinion matters little, if at all. But from what I've been seeing and hearing, we are slowly achieving that goal of establishing security. It's too early to call the Surge a success. I think it is succeeding. While I mentioned that its goal (establishing security) is narrower than the overall goal of turning Iraq into a healthy state, the Surge is, by necessity, tied to that larger goal. So we won't really be able to call it a success until Iraq itself is a success.