History quietly unfolds in Iraq

The News Virginian
Published: September 3, 2008

Cleaved by Eden’s Euphrates, Iraq’s Anbar Province bears war’s scars but no longer resemblance to Dante’s seventh circle. Iraqi soldiers and police marched through Ramadi’s streets Monday, marking their takeover of responsibility for the province and a historic moment cast adrift in the American consciousness.
Hope was thought futile in Anbar two years ago, when Sunni insurgents reigned and improvised bomb blasts and gunfire echoed through the ruins. The transformation of America’s fortunes in the epicenter of the war on terror began with the troop surge initiated in January 2007 to cries of opposition from Democrats, among them the party’s nominee for president.
While Iraq assumes control in Anbar, a dwindling band of insurgents clings to life in Mosul. Their ranks have been trimmed from 12,000 to 1,200. Some have fled the city, once a terrorist stronghold. So pervasive is the sense that America has seized unbreakable control of the fight that some defense officials are lobbying for a shift in emphasis to Afghanistan, where levels of violence are higher.
As the insurgency in Iraq crumbles, some Democrats direct their sights to matters more pressing, such as the marital status of a political opponent’s pregnant 17-year-old daughter.
Angst and outrage over President Bush’s foray in Iraq was understandable and justified. Among Bush’s many lapses and perhaps his greatest was his failure to articulate a compelling case for the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. He perhaps failed because there was no such case to be made.
The president asked Americans to believe Iraq posed a threat to national security, but delivered no evidence beyond dubious intelligence reports later proved flawed. Now Americans are advised to direct their apprehensions toward Iran, where incompetence subsumes dictatorial bluster.
Nonetheless, the product of Bush’s fallacy, delivered with precision by the remarkable valor of U.S. soldiers, has been the suffocation of al-Qaida in Iraq, to which terrorists flocked with their vain dreams of falling an empire. They now are depleted and on the precipice of defeat.
This has infused Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with confidence he lacked a year ago. He is pushing discussions of an American troop withdrawal founded on the conviction that his Sunni enemies are sapped of strength.
Now comes Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois and Democratic presidential aspirant, championing his previous calls for withdrawal while ignoring that step’s necessary antecedents. Unlike the foreign countries with which America has engaged in past conflicts, insurgents precluded the prospect of diplomacy to end hostilities. Absent negotiations or victory, withdrawal from Iraq could only be accomplished with a dramatic loss of American life.
Never has the U.S. military confronted a foe whose tactics and cunning were so far removed from convention. Other wars were dramatically larger in size and scope, but none in challenge. Gen. David Petraeus, whose strategies provided the map for turnabout and the soldiers whose bravery engineered it, should be hailed for their service and heroism.
Fortunately, that spirit pulses beyond the Beltway. American soldiers prospered in spite of the one who sent them there and others who sought to bring them home absent victory’s reward. It is a moment worth celebrating. Leaders, so-called, ignore it to their shame.