As the presidential candidates continue to debate the success of the troop surge, the American Prospect has convened a diverse group of Iraq experts to weigh in. Included in the panel are CFR Senior Fellow for Defense Policy Stephen Biddle, Global Americana Institute President Juan Cole, and Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb, among others.

Shawn Brimley, Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, says the surge has been “overly simplified” by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has insisted that the strategy was successful. “A change in strategy, plus the Sunni Awakening, the decision of Sadr to stand down his militia, and the use of concrete barriers in Baghdad to separate Sunni and Shia were all extremely important factors that, along with the additional troops, combined to help lower the violence,” he says.

Brookings’ Michael O’Hanlon says it is “incontrovertible to me that several major factors, including certainly the surge, were hugely important–and also synergistically important, in that the sum of effects was much greater than the sum of the parts.”

Matthew Duss, research associate at the Center for American Progress, says the Awakenings movement, Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr decision to “freeze” his militia, and the sectarian cleansing that led to “the separation of Sunni and Shia Iraqis into protected enclaves” all contributed to the decrease in violence in Iraq. The surge “encouraged, supported and consolidated each of these other phenomena, but very likely could not have succeeded without them,” he says.

Lt. Col. (ret) John Nagl says it is “past time to think about how to transfer some of the hard-earned lessons from countering insurgency in Iraq to the campaign in Afghanistan.”

To read the entire debate, click here.

For more on the candidates’ stances on Iraq policy, see this CFR.org Issue Tracker on the issue.