Slugging it out over the long-ago surge

I felt like Rodney King as I was
reading Michael Desch and Peter Feaver slug it out
in the pages of International Affairs
about the surge. I like both guys, even though they are political scientists,
that most oxymoronic of academic specialties. Maybe one day they can become
historians -- which is what both seem to be trying to be here. (I also aspire to
be one some day.)

My take: Feaver is too
Washington-centric in his views. President Bush's decision to fire General
Casey and go with Petraeus and a changed approach was key, but after that, what
happened in Iraq was more important than anything that happened in
Washington.  It was necessary (and
difficult) to understand what was going on in both capitals, but more important
to know what was going on in Baghdad, especially because Washington's consensus
generally seemed to lag reality by about six months.

Fyi, this poll says Iraqis don't
seem all
that impressed with the surge.

The only thing I would add is that
the older I get, the less I think that Samuel Huntington's Soldier and the State is an accurate portrayal of the way American
civil-military relations work, or even should work. I recently read a good
essay by Richard Kohn about the flaws of Huntington's book, carried in a volume
titled American
Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era, edited by Suzanne Nielsen and Don
Snider. To complete the circle, I met the former in Baghdad during the Surge in
question.