Hillary the only one not to get it: The Surge is Not the Solution

The question is not whether the surge is "working" to prevent this IED or that car-bombing. It's not whether you can cherry-pick one area in which one kind of violence is down. What's needed is political change - in the US and in Iraq - and that has to be the question asked every time the word "surge" is used.

Chris Dodd gets that:

"Despite the exemplary performance of our troops, we are coming off the bloodiest summer of this misguided war and it should be clear that there can be no military solution in Iraq.

"It is useless to argue the merits of a specific tactic when the strategy itself is failed.

"In fact, debating over military tactics when there is no military solution only undermines efforts by those of us who believe that we must change course in Iraq now and begin to immediately redeploy US combat forces so that Iraqi leaders will have the impetus to find a political accord."

Barack Obama gets that:

The disastrous consequences described by President Bush are already in motion and are a direct result of a war that should never have been authorized. There is no military solution to Iraq's problems. The only way to reverse these consequences is to change course through a surge in our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts in Iraq and the region, and a phased withdrawal of our forces that puts real pressure on the Iraqi government to act.

(I like that "surge in our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts" line.)

From the Edwards campaign:

"Our military’s hard-won progress in Al-Anbar province should not distract us from the fact that pouring more military resources into Iraq is no substitute for the comprehensive national political solution that will ultimately resolve the situation in Iraq. President Bush’s failed strategy has led to increased terrorism in Iraq, as we saw with the bombing of the Iraqi Parliament months ago in the Green Zone and the recent horrendous bombings in northwest Iraq that killed over 250 people. And despite the surge, the Al-Maliki government is disintegrating before our eyes. Even worse, President Bush’s mistakes in Iraq have only helped make terrorism worse in the world. As the National Intelligence Estimate recently found, Al Qaeda is as strong now as it was before 9/11.

I looked for statements from the other candidates, but while most of them appear to have addressed Iraq in the past day or so, Dodd, Obama, and Edwards were the ones decisively making the point that the measure of success that matters is not military but political or diplomatic progress. That's a message we need to be hearing from every Democrat.