The Surge Worked, but Will McCain Admit the Rest of the Facts?

As a graduate of Mr. Jefferson's university, a disciple of America's third president, and a delighted resident of Thomas Jefferson Street, I feel it is time to do the right thing, Enlightenment-wise, and place reason before passion.

And admit that the surge in Iraq has worked.

Well, it has been pretty obvious for some months now that General Petraeus and the U.S. military have done a brilliant job at negotiating the treacheries of Iraq and stabilizing the situation there.

But it's an inconvenient truth, for those of us who think that four more years of Republican wrack and ruin are not what the nation needs right now.

And that does make the words hard to say.

Especially since we're not likely to hear John McCain state something truthy on Friday night like, "Well, yes, the surge has worked, thank God, and offered a dignified end to this catastrophic foreign policy debacle I helped push on the American people."

Or, "Yes, the surge has worked—but Senator Obama deserves recognition for opposing this idiotic and costly war from the start."

Or, "Yes, the surge has worked, and, please God, it is not too late to do what we should have been doing for the past seven years: wiping out the terrorists who killed so many of our people on September 11."

Or, "Yes, the surge has worked, and credit should be given to the antiwar Democrats and independents whose opposition to an open-ended occupation helped persuade the Sunnis that the American train was leaving the station and that they better cut their best deal quickly."

Or, "Yes, the surge has worked, and if we're smart we'll seize this pause in the violence as a reason to get our soldiers out of Iraq and home to their families or over to Afghanistan before it's too late."