Fareed Zakaria
Sunday, September 16, 2007; 7:49 PM

There is a central contradiction in almost every defense of the surge that I have heard or read. More troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy were meant to improve security so that Iraqi politicians could then reconcile. But the most important evidence cited to prove the surge's success shows that the process works the opposite way.

Gen. David Petraeus said last week that the "most significant development of the past eight months" was the alliance with local tribes in Anbar province, a tactic that has now spread elsewhere. In Anbar, Sunni groups and the American military have together regained great swaths of territory from al-Qaeda forces. But political success is what led to military success, not the other way around.

Administration officials say the Anbar Sunnis -- disgusted by al-Qaeda's methods -- gathered forces and saved their province from the perfidious ji8hadists. There's some truth to this, but the whole story is a bit more complicated.

The United States had largely alienated Iraq's Sunnis by engaging not simply in regime change but in revolution. It disbanded all the elements of the old order in which Sunnis were dominant -- the army, the bureaucracy, the state-owned enterprises -- and watched passively as purges and ethnic cleansing mounted. By late 2004, some U.S. officials recognized that they needed to bring even radical Sunnis, who dominated the insurgency, into the new Iraq. Many Sunnis were also beginning to recognize that they had made a mistake and made overtures to the United States. But hard-line Shiite politicians in Baghdad and hard-line American officials squashed the overtures. Plus, the Sunnis who would step into the mainstream kept getting killed.

Yet failure followed failure, and eventually the United States began talking to the Sunnis despite concerns about their links to the insurgency. "This was a tough move for everyone," says one senior U.S. official who was not allowed to speak on the record. "People had to start dealing with the enemy, or at least the people we had convinced ourselves were the enemy." This political shift produced an alliance that then made military gains possible.

The surge has proved that more troops can produce enhanced security -- are you listening, Mr. Rumsfeld? -- but it is a holding operation. Eventually, American troops will have to leave. What will cement the security is a political deal among various factions that gives them all an investment in stability. Without such a power-sharing agreement, the order we build will degenerate when we leave -- whether that's six months from now or six years from now. Recall that we've stabilized Fallujah and Ramadi several times before, only to have things fall apart because there was no political follow-up.

What would more time produce? A stronger Iraqi army, greater administrative capacity and less-sectarian police, says the administration. But these are technocratic solutions to a political problem. All these institutions will ultimately respond to the realities of politics in Iraq. And politics remains largely tied to religious parties, militias, local gangs, and patronage and crime syndicates. (When the Hakim family allows the U.S. military to dismantle its militias, which run large areas of southern Iraq, then we will have a new Iraq.) Far from changing existing realities, the surge has mostly helped the Sunnis build their own sectarian power base.

Iraq is going to have to find its political balance among these existing forces rather than from a new nationalism. The United States might propel Iraqi leaders to do so by relinquishing our dominant security role, scaring them into compromise, just as we and the Sunnis were pushed to make up. In any event, that's something we will have to test, and there is little to be gained from waiting.

One point President Bush made last week was important. We have strategic, political and moral reasons to remain involved -- as long as the Iraqis request it. The most significant way we can help Iraq is to be there for the long haul, assisting it economically and politically, but also maintaining a smaller, more enduring military presence. That is a far more strategic role for U.S. troops than policing the streets of Baghdad. Making clear that we aren't going to disappear entirely will change the calculus of all those groups in Iraq that are keeping their "post-American" options open.

Bush has wasted his limited political capital buying the surge six more months. There is a much more important deal to be had: Go down in troop levels, but go long. If you listen to leading Democrats, most recognize the need for a smaller, longer American mission in Iraq. But to get there, the president has to recognize that the mission of 130,000 American troops in Iraq -- for better or worse -- is done.

The writer is editor of Newsweek International. He co-hosts, with The Post's David Ignatius, PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues at newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. His e-mail address is comments@fareedzakaria.com.