William Kristol has a great article on the troop surge and its potential political impact over at The Weekly Standard. I agree with everything he says in the article, including the last paragraph:

Over the last few months, the United States (finally) surged in Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq has now surged against the surge. Iran is surging against the surge. We’re pushing them back. Now the Democrats in Congress, the mainstream media, and the foreign policy establishment have mounted their own surges against the surge. So far, Bush is beating them back. If Bush can hang tough, and General Petraeus can keep on surging, the Defeatists will fail. And the United States will have a good chance to succeed in Iraq.

If everything continues to go well with the surge and benchmarks continue to be met, the United States could see a great situation in Iraq leading to an eventual pullout of U.S. troops. However, I don’t think many people are thinking about what happens after the surge. Will we surge in Iraq again to protect the results of the former surge? Will there need to be another troop surge if violence that once was suppressed, re-emerges after U.S. troops leave? These are interesting thoughts that need to be discussed, but not in this post. What I’m concerned about is something that not many people are talking about - the need for stable democratic institutions.

I’m constantly online reading what other conservatives think about this war and most all agree that the United States can pull off a victory in Iraq with enough steadfast determination to succeed. But many aren’t talking about why political reconciliation is so hard for the Iraqi government. Ethnic tensions and the dynamics of tribal factions are now just being understood, but I think that people have lost focus of one of the most important ingredients of any representative, democratically elected government - the need for institutions and traditions supporting democratic governance.

There is a legitimate need for proper and stable democratic and executive institutions that will help to bring stability to a new government derived of the people. It’s easy to talk about representative goverment in countries with rich traditions of local control and self rule like the United States and most western European countries (even stemming back to colonial legislatures). But when you inject representative government into a society with little to no history of long term self-rule, conditioning and development of democratic institutions takes much more time, especially when pressured to influence societial governance as quickly as Iraq is being pressured right now.

In my opinion, the focus on development of democratic institutions is missing in the surge mindset of the president and many U.S. commanders in the region. This must be corrected if we are to be successful in helping Iraq develop a strong federal government that is truly capable of autonomous self rule.