Kristol again

He writes:

Only a year ago, we were headed toward defeat in Iraq. Without McCain’s public advocacy and private lobbying, President Bush might not have reversed strategy and announced the surge of troops in January 2007. Without McCain’s vigorous leadership, support for the surge in Congress would not have been sustained in the first few months of 2007. So: No McCain, no surge. No surge, failure in Iraq, a terrible setback for America — and, as it happens, no chance for a G.O.P. victory in 2008.

Which is, I guess, an interesting story about a fictional Congress that has at various time been on the verge of ending a fictional war waged by a fictional president who himself sits on a fictional fence about whether to keep fighting. In reality, the surge was a political gambit designed to move the conversation in Washington from the grand strategic failure to the illusory success of a series of new tactical policies in Iraq. And that gambit largely succeeded. But the surge never lacked support among Republicans, Democratic efforts to voice the sense that Congress disapproved of it were weak, and it would have happened with or without the input of John McCain.