From the horse's mouth, so to speak. The author "David Kilcullen is Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser, Multi-National Force—Iraq". He describes the basic strategy for the 'surge', which is to not only clear and hold pieces of territory, but is a population-centric and not enemy-centric startegy. And it could fail dramatically, because the question is, is there enough police/army troops to hold every single population center? That's what's going to happen, essentially, as we clear out the bad guys, they're going to go somewhere else. If we leave this new area, they'll come back. Do we have the patience for this? I'm not sure. I see this strategy taking 150,000 troops and 5 years to finish. With presidential elections in a year, we could be out of Iraq by then. If we do that, we'll lose. If we stay, we'll win. I think it's pretty simple.