If there’s one thing I’m sick of hearing, it’s that the “surge” is working. The increase in American troops (though they are required to implement the new strategy) isn’t what’s reducing violence and resulting in increased intelligence — assuming such progress is being made. It’s the counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics employed by Gen. Petraeus that are working.

Surprisingly, The New York Post has an interview with Gen. Petraeus that explains why the COIN strategy he’s implemented since taking over command of Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) is working.

What tactics are working? “We got down at the people level and are staying,” he said flatly. “Once the people know we are going to be around, then all kinds of things start to happen.”

More intelligence, for example. Where once tactical units were “scraping” for intelligence information, they now have “information overload,” the general said. “After our guys are in the neighborhood for four or five days, the people realize they’re not going to just leave them like we did in the past. Then they begin to come in with so much information on the enemy that we can’t process it fast enough.”

. . .

“We’re clearing it neighborhood by neighborhood.” Troops move in - mainly U.S. soldiers and Marines supported by Iraqi forces, although that ratio is reversed in some areas - and stay. They are not transiting back to large, remote bases but are now living with the people they have come to protect. The results, Petraeus says, have been “dramatic.”