I’m baffled by our military leaders who continue to think either or. The above biases of Army and Airforce shows their lack of overall appreciation of the strategic and tactical situation.

Why did the surge work? It wasn’t just the additional boots, better humint, and quantity of bombs. I think all of them played a role, but there was another factor that came to play as well, and is a classic military maxim – Timing! The time was right for the surge. The indigenous population was sick of Al-Qaeda and wanted to get rid of them. This enabled our military to drain Mao’s sea so the Al-Qaeda fish could no longer swim in it. We put the right concentration of force at the right place and at the right time.