Is "the surge" the last, best chance for victory in Iraq?

The surge ...
The escalation ...
The augmentation ...

If as President Bush said—clearly, by the way—"that Iraq is the central front in 'the decisive ideological struggle of our time,' " to quote Frank Rich in today's NY Times (OpEd, Sunday, December 14, 2007) ... then is "the surge" the last, best chance for victory in the Iraq?

And Bush and his cohorts like Senator Lieberman keep saying there is no viable alternative plan ... what about the Baker-Hamilton Commission's report outlining a series of concrete and defined steps to resolve the conflict?

But the question is, if this is "the decisive ideological struggle of our time" then is throwing 21,500 more troops ... bringing the current total to something less than the highwater mark in this war ... an appropriate response? Of course it isn't. 50,000 more troops wouldn't work ... and what is more worrisome, our soldiers will now stay in the conflict zones as embeds in the Irag military, rather than withdrawing to secure areas for rest and and renewal.

And that is the duplicity of this step ... for it does little if anything to end the civil war now raging in Iraq, while making our soldiers easier targets ... but it does take us closer to the Battle of Armageddon ... the dream of the neocons.