"We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq." [UPDATED]

That's the surprising (to them!) conclusion of Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institution, "two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq," but who "just spent eight days [in Iraq] meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel":

[W]e were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with. [...]

[T]he first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

In the Northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul, mayors told O'Hanlon and Pollack that Iraqi security forces now are much more reliable, but that that reliability is still precarious, guaranteed by the American presence, and consequently the mayors' "greatest fear" is of an an "overly rapid American departure."

Also encouraging:

[F]ar more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army’s highly effective Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni Arab.

Seems Michael was right:

A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help.

Translation:  we're the vise clamping together the shattered vase until the glue sets, and it ain't epoxy.  We're lucky if it's Elmer's.  But with time and a reduction of the forces trying to re-break the thing, at least some of it could hold.  O'Hanlon and Pollack conclude:

[T]he surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

I hope this piece will be influential.  How about mass e-mailing it to Hillary and Obama??

UPDATE:  A raging argument in the comments at Althouse demonstrates that those on the left are doing all they can to discredit O'Hanlon and Pollock, claiming that they've been "cheerleaders" for the war all along.  Glenn Greenwald has a major piece on this somewhere or other that is a centerpiece of the argument.  I'm not going there or linking to it because I can't read Greenwald's self-parodically clotted prose.  (Every time Ann quotes him I think it's from The Onion.), but the link is in Ann's comments.  Both O'Hanlon and Pollock have pieces on Iraq posted on the Brookings website (link above) going back to 2003 and before.  I've thought that before taking their statement that they have been war critics at face value, it would be good to go back and read some of their earlier writings (rather than listen to what partisans on either side have to say about it).  If somebody has time to do that --I should not even be doing this -- please report back.

I know there are many people who are sincerely, if somewhat reflexively, opposed to continuing this war, or who are so sickened by what has transpired till now that they can no longer change their minds.  But in the pol-and-pundit class, I have the impression that "antiwar" has virtually become the Democrats' identity.  It goes back to Vietnam and the boast, "We stopped the war!" -- still the signal achievement and experience of virtuous power that makes a certain swath of my generation feel that whatever else they do or don't do, they will not have lived in vain.  The older ones seem to be trying to relive that moment, the younger ones to get their chance at it.  In that light, the intensity of their hate for George W. Bush can be understood as a kind of love.  (The real opposite of love, as they say, is indifference.)  He gave them a war to be anti.   

Comments

[Randy (Internet Ronin)]

No one else has said anything, so I guess I will mention that the two authors are apparently well-known for their support for the war in Iraq. People like Yglesias have said more than once that they want the Democratic presidential candidates to promise neither will have a place in a new administration.