Narratives and surges, ctd.

Spencer Ackerman thinks David Sanger's Iraq-surge-vs.-Afghanistan-surge piece, which I panned earlier this morning, is useful -- particularly this paragraph:

Both surges aimed to knock back an insurgency that had gained territory and caused high casualties, and to buy time and space to train local forces for combat. "Neither one of these surges," said one officer involved in both decisions, "was born to exploit success. They were designed to reverse momentum."

"That's an overlooked point and a useful, precise concept," Spencer writes. But is it, really? Sanger says nothing about the reasons why the insurgency is ascendant, or why U.S. strategy isn't working, or about the success of training foreign forces, or about the insurgency's sources of funding, or its ideology... he simply says that both surges aimed to deal with strong and growing insurgencies.

That's a similarity, to be sure, but I don't see how it informs strategy, or how it suggests that an Iraq-style escalation is the best course of action for Afghanistan.