The View From Here . . .
By Bob Morgan, Jr.

This week marks the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war, a long and difficult struggle.

When the war started in the early spring of 1993, the United States and its allies were primed for a relatively brief campaign that primarily involved removing Saddam Hussein. A key rationale, but certainly not the only one, for the invasion was Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, which he led the world to believe he had.

The removal of Saddam was easily accomplished, but from then on there have been very mixed results. On the positive side, three elections have been held with very broad participation and a coalition government has finally been installed. In addition, much of Iraq, particularly the Kurdish region and the area around Basra, is relatively peaceful The Iraqi economy is growing quickly by 4 percent a year.

To recount some of the many things that have not gone well, significant quantities of weapons of mass destruction were never found; insurgent groups, frequently helped by foreign fighters, have engaged in a relentless campaign of sabotage and destruction. In 2006, fighting between Sunnis and Shiites put the country perilously close to civil war. Tragically, tens of thousands of Iraqis and over 3,000 Americans have lost their lives.

And it is fair to place a good deal of the blame for the failures on the Bush Administration. There was a great lack of understanding in 2003 of the difficult task of restoring order and stability to an ethnically divided land. And, almost certainly the troop level was insufficient to do the job.

There are signs of hope in Iraq, however tentative, in recent months. The most important one is that the surge in Baghdad, which even now has only included two brigades of United States troops out of a possible six, has almost totally driven the Shiite militias from the field, leaving only Sunni fighters and their al-Qaeda allies. Put in another way, at present it is not accurate to talk of civil war in Baghdad because only one side is fighting. As columnist Rich Lowry puts it, "What happens to a civil war if only one side shows up to fight it?"

On the ground, too, there is some good news. Two courageous brothers living in Baghdad, Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, write frequent weblog entries about life there, including many that have reported difficult conditions. But lately things have turned a bit more upbeat. This week, Mohammed writes as follows:

"No doubt people who follow the news as it is being reported in the West get the impression that we're fighting a lost war... You look around in Baghdad now and see hundreds of men working in the streets to pick up garbage; to plant flowers and paint the blast walls in joyful colors. Many of Baghdad's squares are becoming green and clean. The picture isn't perfect, but it's a clear attempt to beat violence and ease pain through giving the spring a chance to shine. Nights in Baghdad now are far from quiet, but the sounds cause less anxiety for me than they did before. I recognize the rumble of armor and thump of guns and they assure me that the gangs and militias do not dominate the night as they once did."

Obviously, at some point the cost of the war will be viewed as too high, whatever the ultimate possibility of stability in Iraq in the long run. But I do not believe that this point has yet been reached.