The Redhunter

Next is an article in the Investors Business Daily (author unknown) titled "Progress, Progress And More Progress"

Among our recent successes

• In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, British Major Gen. Graham Binns said that attacks against British and American forces have plunged 90% since the start of September.

• Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki reported that terrorist attacks of all kinds are down almost 80% from last year's peak — thanks directly to the U.S. surge of 30,000 new troops.

• Amid growing signs that even Iraq extremists have tired of terrorism and killing, a Sunni religious group closed down the high-profile Muslim Scholars Association because of its ties to terrorists.

• U.S. Major Gen. James Simmons, speaking in Baghdad, said Iran's pledges to stop sending weapons and explosives into Iraq "appear to be holding up." Roadside bombs, the leading killer of U.S. troops, have plunged 52% since March, he added.

• Perhaps most touching, according to a report from Michael Yon, who deserves to be the first blogger to win a Pulitzer Prize, Muslims are asking Iraqi Christians to return to help build Iraq.

Iraqi Muslims recently crammed into St. John's Catholic church in Baghdad to attend a Christian service. According to Yon, "Muslims keep telling me to get it on the news. 'Tell the Christians to come home to their country Iraq.' "

• Finally, there's this from Douglas Halaspaska, a reporter on the Web site U.S. Cavalry ON Point: "I came to Ramadi expecting a war and what I found was a city that has grown from the carnage, and all its inhabitants — both Iraqi and American — healing. I was not expecting what I found in Iraq . . . it was better than all of that."

Again, all this has taken place just in recent days, weeks and months. The positive news has become simply overwhelming.

For those who think that such recent successes can only be illusory because "things can't turn around that quickly", Victor Davis Hanson offers this bit of history

The White House was burned by British forces in late August 1814; a little more than four months later, the British were routed at New Orleans. During the Civil War, the Union army was on the ropes in July 1864 yet outside Atlanta by September. The Germans were driving through France in March 1918, but fleeing toward the Rhine by August. The communists took Seoul in early January 1951, yet were pushed back across the Demilitarized Zone a little more than three months later.

Tony Blankley, editor of The Washington Times, wonders whether we're headed towards an "Old Fashioned" Victory In Iraq

It has become obligatory for both pro- and antiwar commentators to never mention the possibility of victory in Iraq. The most that antiwar people will admit is that the surge has gained a temporary military advantage in a war that cannot be won militarily. The most pro-war commentators will claim is that they see the possibility of "success" perhaps, maybe, someday, somehow.

But as of Veterans Day 2007, I think one can claim a very real expectation that next year the world may see a genuine, old-fashioned victory in the Iraq War. In five years we will have overturned Saddam's government, killed, captured or driven out of country almost all al Qaeda terrorists, suppressed the violent Shi'ite militias and induced the Sunni tribal leaders and their people to shun resistance and send their sons into the army and police and seek peaceful resolution of disputes. And we will have stood up a multisectarian, tribally inclusive army capable of maintaining the peace that our troops established.

One big question is what Iran is up to. We all know that they've been arming the insurgency and sending agents into Iraq. According to Eli Lake, staff reporter for the New York Sun, there are two schools of thought on this

On one side are the civilians in charge of the State Department and the Pentagon, Secretary of State Rice and Defense Secretary Gates, who are arguing that the change in Iraq reflects a strategic decision from Iran.

On the other side are General David Petraeus and his commanders in Iraq, who say the decline in violence reflects not the decisions of the Islamic Republic but rather the success of the military surge aimed in part at Iran's terrorist and influence network.

If Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates win the policy debate, the current American and Iraqi efforts to disrupt Iranian supply lines into Iraq, detain or kill operatives, and freeze assets for Iran will halt. In their place, the moribund Baghdad negotiations that were suspended over the summer will be revived and the American Embassy will work to extract guarantees from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to end its support for terrorism and sabotage.

If Rice and Gates lose, then presumably the interdiction efforts will continue. I don't know who is right, but hope we make the right decision.

The next big test will be to see what happens after we withdraw some of our troops and let the Iraqis take over more and more areas. The Associated Press asks whether they can hold

The first big test of security gains linked to the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq is at hand.

The military has started to reverse the 30,000-strong troop increase and commanders are hoping the drop in insurgent and sectarian violence in recent months — achieved at the cost of hundreds of lives — won't prove fleeting. ...

... But [Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil] said it was now clear that U.S. forces, with Iraqi help, have gained the upper hand in Baghdad.

"Perhaps even most significantly, the Iraqi people have just decided they've had it up to here with violence," he said, echoing the assertion of numerous other commanders that one of the most important developments since early summer has been an erosion of what some call a culture of fear in Baghdad.

Their belief is that the tide has turned in favor of the forces of moderation. But will it last?

W Thomas Smith may be right that the lede is cynical, but it asks the right question.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress are still trying to lose the war. Fox News reports that

Democrats (tried but )failed to bring combat troops home from Iraq by December 2008 and place more restrictions on the administration's interrogation program through a $50 billion war-funding measure.

The predictable excuse is that the Iraqi government has failed to perform as it should

Senate Democrats also said money for the Iraq war should be tied to troop withdrawals because the Baghdad government has not taken advantage of the security provided by U.S. forces.

"We have done our part," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. "The Iraqi government has not done its part."

No doubt that the central government in Baghdad leaves a lot to be desired. And they have not "done their part" as much as they need to. But these things take a lot of time, much more than the mentality of the MTV/video game US legislators will give them.

They forget that Lt Col David Kilcullen (Austrailian Army), former senior advisor on counter-insurgency matters to Gen Petraeus (and now on Sec Rice's staff) reminded Charlie Rose last month that

There has never been a successful counterinsurgency that took less than 10 years.

We might or might not succeed in Iraq even if we continue our current so-far-successful strategy. But we will definately fail if we withdraw troops precipitously as the Democrats want us to do. And the consequences of failure are so severe that we must pursue victory, certainly at a time when our current strategy is so clearly working.