The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost.I'd come to realize long ago, along with many other conservatives, that the principle problem with the conflict in Iraq was that we didn't use sufficient troops in the initial occupation, allowing the insurgency to flourish. Senator McCain highlighted this fact often. When President Bush finally recognized his horribly flawed strategy and initiated the "surge" to quell the insurgency, the situation on the ground improved.Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace — a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.
Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.
That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.
Today, we're winning, and the conflict can finally enter the rebuilding phase. Now, does anything think Obama will actually acknowledge our success, or will he simply advocate that we squander it via an ill-advised and abrupt draw-down of troops?
