When the reporting of good news from Iraq merits its own news coverage, then you know the American people are not being given the whole story by the media.

TIME Magazine's Joe Klein — a longtime critic of President Bush and the Iraq war — writes this week — "There is good news from Iraq."
Klein details progress in Anbar province against Al Qaeda — including some days in which there have been zero effective attacks by insurgents.
He credits alliances between U.S. troops and local tribes — and writes that at least two other Sunni-dominated provinces are seeking similar alliances.

And among the examples are the following.

There is good news from Iraq, believe it or not. It comes from the most unlikely place: Anbar province, home of the Sunni insurgency. The level of violence has plummeted in recent weeks. An alliance of U.S. troops and local tribes has been very effective in moving against the al-Qaeda foreign fighters. A senior U.S. military official told me—confirming reports from several other sources—that there have been "a couple of days recently during which there were zero effective attacks and less than 10 attacks overall in the province (keep in mind that an attack can be as little as one round fired). This is a result of sheiks stepping up and opposing AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] and volunteering their young men to serve in the police and army units there." The success in Anbar has led sheiks in at least two other Sunni-dominated provinces, Nineveh and Salahaddin, to ask for similar alliances against the foreign fighters. And, as TIME's Bobby Ghosh has reported, an influential leader of the Sunni insurgency, Harith al-Dari, has turned against al-Qaeda as well. It is possible that al-Qaeda is being rejected like a mismatched liver transplant by the body of the Iraqi insurgency.

None of that is to say that the situation is perfect – nor that everything will be fixed in six months. And there are certainly problems with the current government – but it is a heck of a lot better than the murderous Saddamite regime ever was.

Nd let me say it – I understand the desire to see this war come to an end. Having grown up in a military family and having repeatedly sought a military career during my college years (injuries in a car accident ended that dream), I recognize that war is horrible and produces thousands of deaths in combat that each constitute a monumental individual and national tragedy. I wept the night that the war began, and I have wept over this war every day since then. But my study of history tells me that there is no acceptable substitute for victory in Iraq, and that choosing failure will result in a tragedy that far outstrips the horrors of Cambodia’s killing fields – and will render the sacrifices of the troops a meaningless waste of human life.

Posted by: Greg at 12:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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