You have the history of this all wrong. It is no wonder you are so confused about what is the best course forward when you have no idea what happened in the last few years.

When the awakening started the US started paying various Sunni tribal and nationalist groups that had previously been resisting the US to become a militia and restore order in their areas. The US provided arms, training and it payed salaries to the men. In addition to restoring order, they provided the US with intelligence on the location of al-Qaeda in Iraq groups. This allowed the US forces or joint US and Iraqi forces to hunt down and drive al-Qaeda from Anbar. Al-Qaeda was already mostly driven out of Anbar before the first surge troops arrived. There were two things that allowed the awakening to succeed in Anbar. First many of the nationalist resistence groups switched sides, isolating the al-Qaeda resistance cells. Second, the Iraqis knew exactly who the al-Qaeda resistence fighters were and gave the US and Iraqi forces the intelligence to find them. This is basic counterinsurancy strategy.

What the surge did do is provide some addtional troops in other regions of Iraq which allowed the Awakening to be duplicated more quickly in many other parts of the country.

And now McCain has declared that when he says "the surge" he means that the surge wasn’t actually the surge, but everything that came before the surge also, allowing the surge to cause events that happened before it. 

It’s one thing to argue that the surge was the right call (though saying that it was "risky" basically concedes that it was a gamble, which somewhat deadens any rhetoric about critics being irresponsible in opposing it), which is a great point for McCain to hammer down Obama’s throat.

But it’s quite another to descend into sheer absurdity in defending incoherent gaffes that badly misunderstand the very policies you’re championing, and trying to spin the apparent perference of the Iraqi government as to how we should go forward.

And now we apparently have the McCain campaign saying that they can get us out of Iraq faster than Obama can, which is all kinds of "wtf?"

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So, it was the Bush admin’s "stay the course" policy that finally paid off?

re "The point of a withdrawal timetable was to motivate the Iraqis to make political compromises and to take responsibility for security in Iraq rather than relying on US forces to do it for them."

BS. 

The theme showed specifically to attempt to refute the idea that withdrawal before Iraq forces are ready is a flat out loss for the US.  The point of withdrawal from the standpoint of the people that supported the notion was (1) get the US out of an immoral war, (2) get the US out of a losing situation, and (3) stop getting US soldiers killed.   No one in the withdrawal camp ever thought that the Iraq military is capable of holding a stable country in peaceful conditions within the timetables proposed, including the more recent ones proposed by Obama or Iraq (hence the major caveats and potential bailout built into the Iraq PR).

You know what we call people who call raises with 64 off and then call down with a pair of sixes? We call them fish. They win pots often enough that they do not realize how badly they are playing. That is the beauty of poker. In the end though, the fish that play like that are lifetime losers.

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The Awakening was certainly critical, but the tactics later applioed in the surge created the Awakening in the first place by showing we would defend the populace and treat them well. It was the success of those tactics in a few towns in Anbar that led to their wide adoption in 2007. The surge recognized the success and applied them over the country, actively and deliberately expanding the Awakening a hundredfold.

It would be a disaster to elect another president that believes the failed policy of unilateral US military action

Even more absurd. Unliateral military action is nonexistent; we had help from dozens of countries, and the effort was hugely successful.

If McCain believes that the surge defeated terrorism in Iraq, then he is unqualified to be president. It was the Iraqis that stepped forward and provided the critical contribution to defeat the terrorists in Iraq. The surge helped, but it was the Iraqi change of heart that made the critical difference. That Iraqi change of heart started in mid 2006, long before any surge troops arrived or anyone had even heard of the surge.

It would be a disaster to elect another president that believes the failed policy of unilateral US military action is the best way to deal with terrorism.

Before the surge we had 130,000 or so troops in Iraq. It was widely believed that we would need 400,000 to 600,000 troops in Iraq to "win" the war (ie, militarily defeat al Qaeda, other Sunni nationalist resistance groups, and the Shiite resistance groups). Sending an extra 30,000 to 40,000 troops was not going to get the job done. The US simply did not have the troops needed to win.

The whole original idea of the "surge" was to improve security around Bahgdad by a little, particularily near the greenzone, and that this would motivate the Iraqi government to make some political compromises and to take resonponsibilty for improving their own security. The Iraqis had 300,000 or 400,000 troops they were not using very effectively.

The "surge" was a very risky strategy. It used up all of the US reserve forces available to deal with any other major crises, and therefore put US national security at significant risk. As it turned out the timing of the surge was very good. In Feb 2006 Muqtada al-Sadr order his militia to stop death squad ethnic cleansing. In Aug 2006 Muqtada al-Sadr order his militia to start observing a cease fire. In Sept 2006 the Sunni Awakening started in Anbar. This allowed the US and Iraqi forces to get accurate intelligence on al Qaeda in Iraq and to effectively fight them. It was not until Nov or Dec 2006 that anyone started talking about the surge and the first surge troops did not arrive until March 2007. By the time the first surge troops arrive, al Qaeda was already on the run in Anbar.

There is no question that the surge troops helped accelerate the Awakening. Many of the surge troops that had originally been target to Bahgdad were deployed to other parts of Iraq to help spread the Awakening across the rest of the country.

It is a serious error to claim that the surge has done nothing to improve the situation in Iraq. It is an equally serious error to claim that the surge is responsible for all of the surity improvements in Iraq or that the surge has "won" the war in Iraq.

If the next president we elect seriously believes that the surge "won" the war in Iraq, he will be tempted to simply repeat the mistakes of the Iraq war again. Neglecting the contributions that Iraqis have made is a very serious error.