Thinking back to the state of Iraq in January 2007, the conventional wisdom was that President Bush showed profound courage by proposing an increase in troop levels in Iraq, and “the surge” is widely considered to have been a success. John McCain and other Republicans frequently cite it as the sole reason for what they see as the United States winning in Iraq and love to claim that Barack Obama’s “focus is on withdrawal, not victory.” However, given the cost and duration of such a misguided war, the outcome of victory is impossible. Regardless of the improvements that many attribute to the surge, the strategy that has been characterized as brilliant by most is hardly more than conventional, and has done very little to alleviate the situation in which America has found itself.

Although the bravery and tactics employed by General David Petraeus deserve commendation, the strategy of the surge which McCain so often boasts about isn’t particularly groundbreaking. Even a seven-year-old playing Age of Empires for the first time knows that if you throw 20,000 extra soldiers into a region, it’s going to be easier to defend. So of course the most powerful and disciplined military in the world was able to reduce violence, but it is hardly enough.

Unfortunately, the surge was implemented to allow room for political progress, and there hasn’t been enough of that to justify what we’ve lost. Provincial elections that were supposed to take place in late 2007 are now delayed until 2009 at the earliest. When they finally do occur, American-supported Prime Minister al-Maliki is projected to lose his coalition to gains by allies of militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; clearly not the progress that we were hoping for. Furthermore, experts fear that the successes that have occurred during the surge are too fragile to continue without the eternal protection of the U.S. military. Forever is a long time to wait for the Iraqi government to stand up.

Since the surge began the American people have endured over 1,000 reported fatalities and nearly 8,000 reported wounded. Nearly two hundred soldiers have committed suicide during that time, and the army suicide rate has increased fivefold since the war began. We have also lost over half a trillion tax dollars when our country is facing an economic meltdown. It’s easy to get riled up trying to contemplate what we’ve lost in this war, and it is just as easy for these statistics to strengthen our resolve and make us more determined to win. But what military campaign could possibly be worth such a cost? Even if we could “win” in Iraq, we have lost at home.

And of course, as we struggle to clean the bloody mess in Iraq that we alone are responsible for, our true enemy, Al Qaeda, is festering in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we can’t even fight them there because the world doesn’t trust us to do right this time. How can we be winning if our true enemy has gained influence and is rallying foot soldiers as we are losing everything?

And then there’s John McCain talking about victory and accusing his opponent of excising this word from his vocabulary even though that’s exactly what Mr. McCain needs to do. General David Petraeus himself has refused to use words like victory and defeat, because “[he] is a realist.”

In his first televised debate with Barack Obama, McCain said that because of the surge “we are winning in Iraq,” and that because we are winning “we won’t come home in defeat and dishonor.” Regardless of our leader’s failures, our soldiers deserve honor for doing exactly what was asked of them. If McCain believes in such conditional love, then he is truly misguided. Instead of showing true leadership and making the hard decision to come home, he ignores the true conditions on the ground and seems to tout the successes of our soldiers solely to be able to claim that he was right and Barack Obama was wrong.

The American people cannot afford another premature Mission Accomplished, and they cannot afford to give President Bush and John McCain another four years, or even eight years, to clean up their mess. We need to come home before we have nothing left to lose.