For Thanksgiving: Less Violence in Iraq

Sometimes we ignore the obvious on this blog. Today we draw attention to it.

Finally the MSM has caught up with our repeated statement that the surge is working.

We like the Financial Times's (motto: the pink newspaper for people rich enough not to worry about their appearance while reading a pink newspaper) headline that includes the term "phenomenal."

From here, expect three things:

• Democrats will continue to complain that "there's no political progress" and will consequently call for a timed withdrawal.
• Various media outlets will report any significant violent incidents and ask whether they indicate that the bad guys have recovered.
• Various pundits will speculate as to whether the bad guys are saving up for next autumn, when they'll let loose with enough explosions to scare the American electorate into voting for the Democrat.

And, to be frank, those are legitimate concerns. But they don't negate the potency of Petraeus's strategy. They simply urge patience with and further adaptation of a fundamentally sound strategy in a part of the world where it takes centuries to mark significant change. War, as always, is at least heck, and it takes tenacious guts to see it through to a decent conclusion.

This, of course, is not the strategy now endorsed by retired General Ricardo Sanchez, who says that political progress is insufficient to justify continued US progress and so now calls for a withdrawal. We note the obvious: Sanchez commanded in Iraq with a different strategy, one that surely didn't work, and now has a vested personal interest in advocating an outcome in which the current commander's strategy is not allowed to outshine his failure.

Note well that the Democrats are now in the unenviable position that they held during the Civil War: recruiting failed generals to speak for their party's position of abandoning the difficult war effort. With his upcoming radio speech on Saturday, Sanchez becomes the McClellan of our era.