As the U.S. military occupation of Iraq continues, it seems lost on the Bush administration and its apologists that the so-called troop surge was initially intended as a tactical approach toward the facilitation of conditions for the takeover of security functions by the Iraqis themselves, As well as the subsequent withdrawal of U.S. troops from what remains a potentially explosive situation. Yet none of these objectives as stated have yet been accomplished, nor is there a discernible effort on the part of the administration and the Iraqis toward that end.

While violence has significantly receded since the implementation of the surge and its coincidence with the short-term tactical co-operation between the U.S. military and the Sunni  insurgents in places like the Anbar, the surge has unwittingly served to prolong the American occupationn through its sustenance of an indefinite stalemate with no light at end of the tunnel.The Bush administration has peddled the surge as if it were an end rather than the means to an end, a strategic goal rather than a tactical approach toward a strategic objective which it is to rebuild Iraqi military capacity so as to enable  them to handle their own security,and thereby facilitate U.S. troop withdrawal.

It cannot be denied that while the U.S. military presence has to a large extent foreclosed wider spread of violence the invasion triggered in the first place, the prospects of an emergence of a viable Iraqi state in the midst of occupation is unlikely at the very best. Conversely, a U.S.  relinguishment of occupation, if effected timely and properly with all the necessary diplomatic and political mechanisms in place to foreclose the risk of state degeneration into interethnic violence, could catalyze organically the reorganization of the Iraqi society in terms dictated by the imperatives of religio-ethnic realities.

Finally, it cannot be emphasized strongly enough that the foregoing perspective argues for a rethinking not just of strategies and tactics attendant to the Iragi debacle, but also of the policy prescription that are all but devoid of strategic vision in the first place.