The Redhunter

StrategyPage also doesn't buy into the notion that all is lost. Number 10 of their Top Ten Myths of the Iraq War points out that

Saddam and his Baath party are out of power. There is a democratically elected government. Part of the Sunni Arab minority continues to support terror attacks, in an attempt to restore the Sunni Arab dictatorship. In response, extremist Shia Arabs formed vigilante death squads to expel all Sunni Arabs. Given the history of democracy in the Middle East, Iraq is working through its problems. Otherwise, one is to believe that the Arabs are incapable of democracy and only a tyrant like Saddam can make Iraq "work." If democracy were easy, the Arab states would all have it. There are problems, and solutions have to be found and implemented. That takes time, but Americans have, since the 18th century, grown weary of wars after three years. If the war goes on longer, the politicians have to scramble to survive the bad press and opinion polls. Opposition politicians take advantage of the situation, but this has nothing to do with Iraq, and everything to do with local politics in the United States.

Yes I know, a vote does not a democracy make. Or more precisely, voting does not ensure liberty. Nevertheless, it is disheartening to see so many on the left disparage the votes in Iraq.

Via Instapundit, Robert Kagan wonders at the juxtaposition of a congress that now wants to bail just as the administrationis finally beginning to fight the war the right way.

Speaking of wanting to lose, Daniel Henninger wrote in the Opinion Journal a few weeks ago that "We're Talking Ourselves into Defeat"

The United States is talking itself into defeat in Iraq. Its political culture is now in a downward spiral of pessimism. In the halls of Congress, across endless newspaper columns, amid the punditocracy and on Sunday morning talk shows--all emit a Stygian gloom about America.

Whether we succeed or not will depend on the al-Maliki government, and the people of Iraq. Charles Krauthammer, speaking on Brit Hume's Fox News All-Stars, thinks that we can win the war, " but it depends on Maliki. It's going to depend on what he does, what his brigades do and what he does in curtailing the Shiite death squads." StrategyPage, which has written on the subject many times before, says that "the basic problem in Iraq is, and always has been, a shortage of public minded citizens."

As for the insurgency itself, Nibras Kazimi, writing in the New York Sun, thinks that there has been a "Turnaround in Baghdad"

What needs to be understood is the central role that Al Qaeda — or more accurately its successor organization, a group called the Islamic State of Iraq — is playing on these fronts and the diminishing role of all the other insurgent groups. The wider Sunni insurgency - the groups beyond Al Qaeda - is slowly, and surely, defeated. The average insurgent today feels demoralized, disillusioned, and hunted. Those who have not been captured yet are option for a quieter life outside of Iraq.

Well maybe, but al Qaeda isn't the problem there anymore, it's sectarian violence. The ever-valuable StrategyPage says that "most of the five million Iraqi Sunni Arabs in Iraq have been driven from their homes." That's pretty bad news if true. The good news, they say, is that it does show that the Sunnis have lost the insurgency.

As for the militias, the word is that firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has fled to Iran, leaving his Mahdi Army without a leader. I've also read many stories that this militia and others are taking a pounding from our forces. Skeptics will charge that militamen and their leaders are simply laying low, and no doubt there is some truth to this. Yet I have to think that if we can keep the pressure up for long enough they won't be able to come back, at least not in strength. Anyway, the longer we keep them out of the picture the longer we have to get it right.

Finally, the reconstruction goes on. The indefatigable Bill Crawford posted another of his long pieces on the rebuilding efforts, this time however concentrating mostly on security.

Go ahead, accuse me of only posting good news. I'm actually cautiously optimistic about Iraq, it's what's going on here at home that ha me most worried. The simple fact is that Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as "Lawrence of Arabia", had it right when he said that defeating an insurgency was like "Eating Soup with a Knife". Full explanation here but the short version is that most insurgencies can be defeated in time.

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