John McCain is claiming personal ownership of the surge, boasting of his advocacy as the central element of his national security credentials. But the wisdom of this strategy depends on the media and the voters having an improbably narrow view of the surge’s consequences.

Doubts about the wisdom of McCain’s political calculation do not require the standard argument that the surge failed to achieve its political objectives, nor the fact there are several plausible, alternative reasons for whatever reported reductions in violence may have occurred. One can even discount as temporary the dreadful news that violence appears to have increased in recent weeks, with dozens more killed yesterday, and hope that killings of civilians will decline rather than increase.

The strategic choice whether to increase troops or begin withdrawing them always required the Administration to consider what would happen not only in Iraq but everywhere else. And it’s clear that since the President’s — now McCain’s — policy choice to surge more troops into Iraq, conditions everywhere else have substantially worsened, with increasingly alarming consequences for US security interests.

Recently the negative consequences of the surge decision have been in full view. The Bush Administration sent Secretary Rice, Secretary Gates and senior military officials to Europe, Afghanistan and Pakistan trying to repair the damage caused by the Administration’s neglect of Afghanistan, its neglect of Pakistani democracy and its over reliance on a despised military dictator to cover Afghanistan’s southern flank. At the same time, National Security Director McConnell was warning Congress, in effect, that the Afghanistan/Pakistan region has now become the major threat to American security.

Who can doubt these entirely predictable consequences are linked to the preoccupation with Iraq? And whom should we hold responsible for tying up our strategic reserves to that preoccupation? Admiral Mullen and General Casey have been warning the Administration for months that the size of our occupation was unsustainable, weakening the US military and eliminating the nation’s strategic flexibility to deal with any other contingency.

If McCain wants to take ownership of the surge, he should also be held responsible for all the consequences of the broader strategic choice the surge represented. Whatever the surge may accomplish in Iraq — and it still looks like a highly risky gamble to have armed over 60,000 disaffected Sunni militants — it’s clear the surge has come at the expense of deteriorating conditions in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In pleading the case for more NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Administration is now undermining NATO, our most important security alliance. Gates publically insulted our NATO allies, essentially calling some of them cowards for avoiding combat in Southern Afghanistan. Last week, the Administration divided its time between lecturing our allies on their security and importuning them to save us from the fact we don’t have enough troops left to send ourselves.

The Iraq surge’s costs in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere will continue to play out through the election. But the media, focused more on Petraeus’ Iraq statistics, rarely describes the surge decision as a strategic choice between very different policy alternatives with important consequences outside Iraq.

The American people, however, are proving to be smarter than the media. Despite the claims of success, large majorities still want us out. They understand there is a cost to America’s security from Bush/McCain’s open ended commitment to Iraq, and now they’re making the connection between the massive costs of our occupation and the neglect of America’s economic security. The latter topic would be the one McCain concedes he doesn’t fully understand. No kidding.

So let John McCain take all the credit he wants for the surge. It looks like the voters will hold him responsible for the consequence — all of them.

Update: CNN reported this morning that Secretary Gates will recommend that the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq should "pause" as soon as the additional surge troops are withdrawn in June. Apparently, the surge has been so successful that the remaining 140,000 or so troops can now remain indefinitely.

Related posts:

  1. Conn Hallinan: Why the Afghan Surge Will Fail
  2. Robert Gates: George W. Bush Was No Ronald Reagan
  3. Frank Rich: McCain Was Wrong On Everything. CNN Treats Him As Sage
  4. More Troops for Afghanistan? Faster Withdrawal from Iraq?
  5. Afghanistan: 21,000 Plus 13,000 – or Plus 115,000?