After spending something like six to eight weeks watching liberal organs like The New York Times and the BBC admit to the success of the U.S. "troop surge" in Iraq, I was, until recently, still left in the same position vis-a-vis the Iraq war as before: convinced that there will be no "winners" or "losers" per se.
The "troop surge" really is working, to a degree that has astonished nearly every journalist in Iraq and completely reconfigured the 2008 presidential campaign. There should never have been any doubt that the U.S. could, in the short term, perform apparent prodigies of "nation-building" as a foreign occupier.
But now the first steps toward pulling the plug on the surge are being taken; the number of active U.S. combat brigades in Iraq dipped briefly from 20 to 19 this month, and a permanent reduction to 15 is scheduled for the period between late December and July. The Iraq War, in other words, is about to be Iraqicized.
Right now, it seems that every week brings news of some fresh success; the return of round-the-clock street lighting to Baghdad, the resumption of public Christian worship in the city, the discovery and destruction of enormous caches of high explosives held by insurgents. Sunni militias that once stalked the liberators of Iraq now tip them off by mobile phone to terrorist entrenchments.
Perhaps most extraordinary is the sudden return of thousands of poorer Iraqi refugees who had been languishing as unwelcome guests in Syria; these are people who are voting with their feet, albeit with Syria's grouchy encouragement, in the hope that improved conditions for commerce and intersectarian peace last.