McCain takes credit for the surge

NY Times:

Now that President Bush’s decision early this year to send more troops to Iraq is showing signs of reducing the violence in Baghdad, Senator John McCain, who had long called for beefing up the American military presence there, is betting that the politics of the war are changing as well.

Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, is making his early advocacy of the troop increase and his push for a change in strategy a central theme of his presidential campaign. He is using it to distance himself from the Bush administration, whose handling of the war he regularly denounces, and from his Republican rivals, none of whom, he says, displayed the leadership, courage or knowledge necessary to win in Iraq.

“I was the only one, the only candidate for president of the United States on either side” who fought to change course by providing more troops, he told voters in Iowa this week.

“I did everything in my power to try and change that strategy,” he said, referring to the course originally set by President Bush. “I was severely criticized by other Republicans for being disloyal. I said we had to have the strategy we are using now.”

Mr. McCain is asking voters where his main Republican rivals — Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred D. Thompson — were as the situation in Iraq deteriorated, pointing to their silence as evidence of lack of experience.

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McCain deserves some credit for pushing for additional forces early and often, but his criticism of the other candidates is unfair since none of them was in a position to make that call during the relevant time period. The people he should be criticizing are the Democrats who continued to oppose the surge even after the President ordered it. Certainly the other Republican candidates have supported that effort which makes the criticism all the more unfair. The Democrats are the ones who have shown the poor judgment in the face of the success of the surge and they are the ones who should bear the brunt of the criticism.

I think there are two other important factors associated with the surge.

The most important was the change in the use of the forces that occurred with Gen. Petraeus' adoption of the counterinsurgency warfare strategy. McCain can't take much credit for that and he should be praising the Bush administration for adopting the strategy and criticizing the Democrats for rejecting.

The other important factor is that the number of troops was set by Gen. Abizaid before the change ins strategy based on his belief in a small foot print strategy. The President went along with his commander at that time like he is doing now with Petraeus. The results of the Petraeus plan argue that Abizaid was wrong in keeping the force too small. The bottom line is that both decisions were those of military commanders and not politicians.