Leftists say the surge worked??

Here's an interesting report from the website Truthdig, an interview with Iraqi journalist Huda Ahmed entitled Iraq from the Inside.

On one hand, there is a suggestion that the surge worked from a source you wouldn't have expected, this podcast:

"The surge couldn't have succeeded if they didn't realize that they should have worked together with those awakening groups, the Sunni tribes... If there was no cooperation from both sides, it never would have succeeded. ... In 2008, there is a big improvement in security."

But of course, there is also this:

"But under what cost? If things were not misconducted, after the war, none of this would have happened. None of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would have died, including women, children, young men, old men, you wouldn't see these refugees displaced inside and outside Iraq.
...
We didn't see [respect] when the coalition forces came to Iraq in 2003. We thought they would have a huge respect for Iraqis. And we found that they did not in the way they treated the Iraqi detainees, especially Abu Ghraib. All the Iraqis were shocked. They could have expected anything except that. And also the American contractors. You have thousands of them in Iraq, doing whatever they like, killing, raping, stealing, and they are not prosecuted by any law, the Iraqi law or the American law. They have immunity. ... I don't know what you saved in Iraq. You didn't save the lives of the Iraqis, you didn't save Iraqi history. you didn't save the Iraqi heritage, you didn't save the Iraqi rights. I don't know what model of democracy and liberation did you bring to the Iraqi minds. All we learned from you is violence. That's all we learned from you. We learned the arrogance you came and received the Iraqis with. Dehumanizing them. If you were coming to bring democracy, why would you dehumanize the people? You dehumanize the enemy in war, but not the people you expect to be your friends. ... "

Pope John Paul II's World Day of Peace 1987 stated:

All States have responsibility for world peace and this peace cannot be ensured until a security based on arms is gradually replaced with a security based on the solidarity of the human family.

It is clear that the moral philosophies guiding the manner in which Iraq has been occupied are not based on the solidarity of the human family.