We all breathed a huge sigh of relief when a thirty year old, thuggish Islamist announced he would not make things worse, for a little longer, assuming he can keep control of his lieutenants. How many of chest-thumping, jingoistic soldiers in spirit if not in fact are ready to trumpet that as a success?

Last night on Fresh Air, Patrick Coburn, Brit journalist who has been in Iraq since the invasion, IIRC, said that our Sunni Awakening "Allies" are growing weary of our alliance.

Even Kinsley's jaundiced take is something of a best-case scenario.

As a matter of fact - and I've said it before here - this "fact" that we're all supposed to accept unquestionably - as unforunately Ezra appears to have done - that violence has been dramatically reduced in Iraq as a result of The Surge™ is not a fact at all. Violence in Iraq continues to be substantially out of control, and recently, in fact, it has been getting worse. There are fewer corpses dumped in Baghdad every night and fewer large-scale bombings in the capital, which creates an impression of relative calm to the reporters who never leave the Green Zone. But there are multiple attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces inside the Baghdad city limits every day; while warlords battle for control in the supposedly peaceful Shiite south and the provinces of Nineveh and Diyala, as well as the Kurdistan-Iraqi border region and yes, Fallujah and Ramadi, continue to be in a state of open warfare with dozens killed every day. The only reason there are fewer corpses in Baghdad is that the sectarian cleansing process has been completed. Otherwise, there is no "progress" whatsoever, of any kind. Most of the violence goes unreported in the U.S. media, . So please, enough of this obligatory bow to the "gains" of the surge. There aren't any.

Bush himself said that the escalation, uh, "surge", would last at most six months and its success would mean that we could start bringing the troops home in significant numbers.
If we are to consider the escalation, uh, I mean "surge" on these terms alone, then it is an absolute failure. There are at least 20,000 more troops in Iraq than there were pre-surge and Bush's Brilliant Political Strategist Petraeus has put a nix on withdrawals by hitting the "pause" button. All they have succeeded in doing is guaranteeing that the next president will have to clean up the giant mess - which is exactly what their plan was to start with.

it's a danger that things may go badly if the newly re-armed Sunnis cannot make political terms with the Shiites.

BUT.

Al Qaeda had to be largely eliminated. And it is being eliminated. Never mind we ourselves allowed it in thru Syrian border by invading, point is it was there.