We've done what Obama said could not be done in Iraq

Kimberley Kagan and Frederick Kagan:

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By February 2008, America and its partners accomplished a series of tasks thought to be impossible. The Sunni Arab insurgency and al Qaeda in Iraq were defeated in Anbar, Diyala and Baghdad provinces, and the remaining leaders and fighters clung to their last urban outpost in Mosul. The Iraqi government passed all but one of the "benchmark" laws (the hydrocarbon law being the exception, but its purpose is now largely accomplished through the budget) and was integrating grass-roots reconciliation with central political progress. The sectarian civil war had ended.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), swelled by 100,000 new recruits in 2007, was fighting hard and skillfully throughout Iraq. The Shiite-led government was showing an increasing willingness to use its forces even against Shiite militias. The announcement that provincial elections would be held by year's end galvanized political movements across the country, focusing Iraq's leaders on the need to get more votes rather than more guns.

Three main challenges to security and political progress remained: clearing al Qaeda out of Mosul; bringing Basra under the Iraqi government's control; and eliminating the Special Groups safe havens in Sadr City. It seemed then that these tasks would require enormous effort, entail great loss of life, and take the rest of the year or more. Instead, the Iraqi government accomplished them within a few months.

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There is much more. Democrats will try to spin their way out of the box they have put themselves in with their pessimism on Iraq, but the fact is they were dead wrong and the US and Iraq would be much worse off if we had followed the Democrats and Obama's faint hearted policy. It is time to make them pay a political price for being so wrong. Republicans need to be much more aggressive in attacking the Democrats' bad polices on national security. The GOP needs to accomplish what our troops and the Iraqis have done in the last year.