DAMASCUS, Syria — It's difficult to stay composed listening to the stories of the million-plus Iraqi refugees who now live here. A teary-eyed father explains to me how his teenage son was nearly kidnapped from a school bus in Baghdad. The son's best friend was seized instead and never seen again. A young filmmaker smokes furiously while arranging a flight to Baghdad to find his missing mother.

Of course, some of those I've met in the region have returned home. Others, upon reaching their homes, found a far less rosy reality than expected, and once again retreated as refugees to neighbor states.

Most grow apoplectic at the prospect of returning to Iraq. When I suggest that there appear to be indisputable security gains as a result of the surge of U.S. troops, they look at me like I've just slapped their child.

After spending time here, I believe Sen. Obama has a problem, and it has nothing to do with finding a running mate: if popular consensus holds that President Bush's surge has been effective, a major pillar of Obama's campaign will be swept out from beneath him.

First of all, it's critical to address what seems to have become an unequivocal truth — that the 2007 surge of U.S. troops in Iraq has "worked." Perhaps the most important tenant of the new strategy has been the direct engagement of local, familial power centers.

An old truism of the region, that "You cannot buy a tribe, but you can certainly hire one," appears to be at work. The president has cast the "sons of Iraq" as the offshoot of life under al Qaeda: young men that have thrown off extremist influence to instead fight for peace and the promise of a democratic Iraq.

What has garnered less attention, though, are the incentives used to harness their support.

While their disaffection with al Qaeda is important, the U.S. also seems to have greased the wheels of this inter-Sunni dissent, paying tribal fighters $360 a month to, in effect, not fight. A leader with 200 troops can clear $100,000 a year. The U.S. budgeted $150 million this year to pay off those fighters who have enlisted to support U.S. and Iraqi troops.

Oddly enough, when given the choice between suicide missions and jobs as neighborhood policemen, young Iraqis have taken the latter. Who would have thought: jobs instead of war.

March's battles in both Basra and the Sadr City district of Baghdad also highlighted the limits of the green Iraqi troops. Iran was forced to broker a cease-fire between radical Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr 's Mahdi Army and the state's forces when fighting reached a stalemate. The aid of U.S. and U.K. air support failed to break the deadlock.

More importantly, despite the security improvements, the government has yet to take political steps forward. Iraq's oil also looms as a time bomb of sorts, a resource curse lying beneath Shi'a-dominated areas that's bound to explode as U.S. patronage wanes.

I'm reminded of an excellent Economist quote from last year: A U.S. soldier fighting alongside a former insurgent asked the Iraqi if he wanted to kill him. "Yes," he responded, "but not today."

An analyst I met with last week in Beirut put it well: "It's far easier to beat back an insurgency than to defeat it completely." Weapons buried in cornfields and sunk in rivers are easily drudged up once occupying forces retreat and politics fails to provide for the population.

Now, this is all likely too in-depth of a policy debate for general consumption. McCain will only need statistics about the decline of U.S. casualties and the media's help — with darling portrayals of the return to vibrant life in Baghdad —- to convince voters that we're on the path to victory.

McCain will cast Obama as the defeatist candidate, a cowardly Democrat seeking to steal humiliation from the jaws of victory. He'll make it a national security issue, highlighting those attacks in the Mideast in which Iraq's jihadi veterans have played a role. He'll remind us that even a corner of Iraq will provide a big enough launch pad for 9/11-scale attacks if extremists take control.

McCain will be able to promise the gradual removal of troops without a timetable or debt to the political left's demands for immediate withdrawal — he'll provide the wise, measured veteran's answer to this complex and dangerous situation.

Obama will have to choose between staying on his given tack or oscillating — either course will leave him vulnerable to attack. Obama's recently disclosed plans to travel to the region, and conversations with the Iraqi foreign minister, appear to be little more than efforts to keep pace with John McCain, but they're steps in the right direction — toward shielding his heel.

Brian Till can be contacted at brian.m.till@gmail.com. To find out more about the author and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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