L et me begin merely by confessing previous hesitancy to embrace Senator McCain's policy prescription of sending more troops to pacify Iraq. For longer than five years now, from the prewar period to the present, I have read and studied various points of view regarding the overall scope and size of our footprint in that troubled war theater. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, I refrain from seeking the mantle of generalship. I am admittedly not Pattonesque, nor as learned in military affairs as more qualified commentators. Therefore illustrating my "perfect war" will be saved for future columns, but it would not be inexact to propose that all conclusions will be based upon sound military theory, not ad hominem attacks on individuals one may disagree with.

This divergence in conceptualizing the future of warfare is illustrated by the theoretical difference in opinion between former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the so-called maverick John McCain. The caricature goes Rumsfeld envisioned a short, quick takedown in Iraq which would require a light and small force, whereas McCain insisted serious counterinsurgency operations must entail a surge or buildup of U.S. soldiers. But these two theories are not mutually exclusive, nor are they monolithic amongst the supposed ideologues who take each side. Retired officers like Colonel Douglas Macgregor advocated an in-and-out incursion with 50,000 troops designed to simply eliminate Iraqi leadership and WMD systems -- none of this idealistic nation-building stuff -- whereas Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, a professor at the Naval War College, took a different approach, called for Hussein's ouster to make globalization "truly global," and sought to distinguish the seams between war and peace. His vision called for a Rumsfeld-Macgregor-type light takedown, with a McCain-backed sustained and heavy-handed "System Administrator" force to occupy Iraq.

Nibras Kazimi, an Iraqi journalist and dissident who worked with the Iraqi National Congress, tells me of the day he and Ahmed Chalabi learned the White House planned to create a Coalition Provision Authority -- which they opposed, as they had called for an immediate transfer of sovereignty after the capture of Baghdad -- all the while Ali Allawi, cousin of former premier Iyad and an equally Western-minded secularist like those at the INC, damns the U.S. occupation for not being domineering enough. The allegedly single-minded and lockstep neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle conflicted (at least initially) with their neocon brethren William Kristol and Frederick W. Kagan; the former shunning the very idea of staying on to occupy, the latter calling for more troops for years.

T he issue of boots-on-the-ground has become politicized and, as almost everything else, caricatured in an awfully monolithic easy-to-understand but inaccurate manner. Tommy Franks and David Petraeus principally agreed on most things in 2003 and do so as well in 2007 -- so, as you may see, it isn't as much about what and why as it is about where and when. The Rumsfeld vision of a quick takedown did in fact transpire. But the war has evolved into a regional conflagration -- not a manifestation we welcomed as evident in our tentativeness to address it -- and the only way to conduct counterinsurgency operations, while beefing up political and psychological operations against our regional enemies, is to change the dynamic in Iraq proper. And this required what John McCain had been calling for since 2003: a larger American presence and a reinforcement of the soldiers already overseas.

While his remedy for the situation, in my opinion, may have been incorrect three years ago, McCain's prescription is correct now. We entered the eleventh hour some hours ago and any drawdown or withdrawal process that did not include political solidification and a concrete security crackdown in Baghdad would be tantamount to capitulation. There are many politicians and pundits who cite the opposition of ex-generals who moaned extra forces were needed to pacify Baghdad (and the whole of Iraq), but when push came to shove, only one serious presidential contender, Senator McCain, proactively embraced this very change once President Bush, perhaps belatedly, decided to alter the rules of engagement, beef up our presence, put General Petraeus in charge, and implement our new counterinsurgency strategy.

And this change was necessary. General Thomas McInerney (Ret.) and Nibras Kazimi, previous advocates of the Rumsfeld in-and-out doctrine, support this McCain-induced course change for reasons they made quite clear at the recent Intelligence Summit in Florida: at a time when Congress went to the Democrats, the Iraq Study Group was advocating a slow-bleed precipitous withdrawal (while chatting with Tehran and Damascus), and Bush's war minister was forced into resignation, the very notion of surging more Americans to take the fight to al Qaida and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq served the jihadists and their cohorts a severe psychological blow. They were not expecting it and they got it. Whether you are a neck-slicing foreigner in western provinces or a card-carrying death squad member in Baghdad, the past few weeks have been more difficult for a reason.

S o this is a weird war of sorts, in that abstract psychology plays as large of a role as concrete results, and that victory, as it has come to be defined, is viewed as an end to violence. This of course overlooks the two pillar counterarguments; first, most functioning peacetime societies have an ebb-and-flow level of criminal activity and violence which is dealt with indigenously; two, by classifying success as the abject pacification of an asymmetrical war zone, we allow our enemies and the opponents of peace to decide when and where the war will end. Do historians categorize Algeria in a continued state of civil war due to current terrorist bombings by the same Islamists the Algerians defeated in their successful counterinsurgency some years ago?

Another folly of ours is touched on by military historian Fred Kagan (mentioned above): we sometimes imprudently think the outcome of every conflict is predictable early on -- a quick and triumphant Grenada-like intervention or a long, deadly, and fruitless situation akin to Vietnam -- but that is not necessarily the case. Yes, the outcome in Iraq is uncertain and circumstances are iffy, but it is not lost. Most wars have foggy conclusions until the end. Senator McCain has been saying all the while that for as long as we have a chance to succeed -- a consensual, representative Iraqi society that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally against regional autocracy -- we must pursue it, whatever the costs. Our well-being is in the balance and if naïve and irresponsible but well-intentioned capitulationists like Johnny Reid Edwards or Chuck Hagel or Barrack Hussein Obama get their way, we will be at it again with clerical fascism and Islamist theocracy in no time (but at greater considerable risk to our countrymen).

We must shun that shortsightedness. When listening to friends and acquaintances whine and carp about Iraq, it is difficult not to come to the conclusion that their defeatism is misplaced and ahistorical in nature. None of the mistakes made in Iraq were or are irreversible. Cortés endured the La Noche Triste slaughter before his Spaniards seized Tenochtitlán to effectively end Aztec existence in 1521. A brave Leonidas mistakenly relied on disloyal Phocian volunteers at Thermopylae, resulting in eventual butchery, but Athenian democracy was saved by a brilliant Themistocles who later defied the Persians at Salamis. Some 70,000 Roman warriors were hacked to death in one afternoon by savages at Cannae -- "flesh to pulp, clean to foul, the courageous to the weeping and defecating," in Victor Davis Hanson's words -- but in the end, Hannibal would fall. For a quick colloquium, archive columns and articles from 1864 pleading with Lincoln, up for reelection, to end the war, negotiate a truce, forgo idealistic emancipation -- labeling him stupid and a murderer and everything under the sun. All this preceded General Sherman's March to the Sea.

T herefore a favorable result for the United States is not only possible but perhaps even probable. We have yet to seriously deal with this war as a regional manner -- weaning off the Saudis and openly calling for the internal downfall of the Islamic Republic of Iran would be a nice start -- but by most accounts, despite continued violence, the surge of additional forces and the tweaking to the rules of engagement in Iraq is bringing about early favorable results. This new strategy places less emphasis on the seek-and-destroy policy of the past and focuses primarily on protecting the civilian population (to defang Iran and al Qaida-provoked sectarianism). Neighborhood by neighborhood in Baghdad this is working quite unlike previous attempts (Operation Forward Together, etc.). Where violence is up -- across the city outskirts -- it is because we are directing the narrative of the killing by taking the fight to Shi'ite militiamen and nihilist criminal Wahhabi hooligans.

Our forces went from being, in a sense, initial liberators, to occupiers, to abandoning entire masses of Iraqi innocents to mask-clad killers (Fallujah, Tal Afar, Ramadi, etc.), to our current role: a militia for all Iraqis who do not have a militia (thereby undermining the necessity behind the continued existence of current militias). U.S. and Iraqi troops entered Sadr City for the first time without a shot fired and Muqtada fled town. His pathetic politicos resigned from the cabinet (major kudos to Prime Minister Maliki for lifting his finger off the Mahdi Army and shrugging off their abandonment of the government). Car bomb factories in Anbar are being dismantled with unprecedented vigor (my sources tell me 26 out of 31 Sunni tribes in Anbar are now proactively fighting al Qaida). Informant tips from the population are up, weapon cache finds are at a high, Mr. Maliki is having sit-down talks with Sunni clans and allowing them to air grievances, and General Petraeus is walking around Baghdad, shaking hands, ordering drinks, and exuding well-placed confidence that the situation in the capital can be stabilized and is in the process of just that.