As General David Petraeus briefs Congress this week on Iraq, it's clear his surge has achieved remarkable results. The most crucial is that the U.S. can no longer be defeated militarily in Iraq, which could not be said a year ago. The question now is whether Washington will squander these gains by withdrawing so quickly that we could still lose politically.There's a tendency in some quarters to decry the effectiveness of the surge but the facts on the ground speak for themselves.
Sixteen months after President Bush ordered the change in strategy, the surge has earned a place among the most important counteroffensives in U.S. military annals. When it began, al Qaeda dominated large swaths of central Iraq, Baghdad was a killing zone, Sunni and Shiites were heading toward civil war, and the Iraqi government was seen as a failure.
Question is, can the US withdraw militarily from Iraq without the country degenerating into sectarian violence and civil war? Some people seem to think so. I wouldn't be so sure.
