Depsite what the left and liberal media would have you believe, progress has been made in Iraq

There is still alot to do in Iraq, but the US is winning the fight


The half-won, half-lost war
By Victor Davis Hanson
May 3, 2008

The gloomy election-year refrain is that America is mired in Iraq, took its eye off Afghanistan, empowered Iran and is losing the war on terror. But how accurate is that pessimistic diagnosis?

First, the good news. For all the talk of a recent Tet-like offensive in Basra, the Mahdi Army of radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr suffered an ignominious setback when his gunmen were routed from their enclaves.

This rout helped the constitutional — and Shi'ite-dominated — government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki renew its authority, and has encouraged Sunnis to re-enter government. Two great threats to Iraqi autonomy — Iranian-backed Shi'ite militiamen and Sunni-supported al-Qaeda terrorists — have both now been repulsed by an elected government and its supporters.

Our armed forces are stretched, but Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and his colonels are quietly transforming a top-heavy conventional colossus into more mobile counterinsurgency forces.

Gen. Petraeus' recent nomination to CentCom commander suggests that, like the growing influence of Gens. U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman in 1863, or of George Marshall when he reconfigured the Army in 1940, we at last are beginning to get the right officers in the right places at the right time.


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