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

After four years of a very difficult war, are things looking up a bit in Iraq?

A number of observers not politically tied to the White House, or even the United States military, have noted some progress in achieving American goals. Writing in The New York Times, Brook-ings Institute analysts Patrick O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, who supported the Iraq war initially but have been sharply critical of the Bush Administration's "miserable" prosecution of the war, reported a number of favorable developments after an eight day visit to Iraq.

In a piece entitled "A War We Just Might Win," Mr. O'Hanlon and Mr. Pollack said that "we are finally getting somewhere, at least in military terms." The authors made the point that morale of American soldiers was high and that the troops had confidence in the new United States commander, David Patraeus.

The article also pointed to considerable progress by the Americans in working with Iraqis in providing security and restoring basic stability and infrastructure. While the dependability of Iraqi security forces "remains a major question mark," Mr. O'Hanlon and Mr. Pollack said that things look much better than before, pointing to the removal of corrupt commanders, the integration of different religious and ethnic groups into the Army.

Mr. O'Hanlon and Mr. Pollack also said that the Iraqis had become very disenchanted with al Qaeda as well as (to a lesser extent) Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. The brutal tactics of these groups had led to their rejection by Iraqis and turning to the Americans for help.

To be sure, Mr. O'Hanlon and Mr. Pollack certainly did not paint a completely rosy picture and described the situation as remaining grave. The Iraqi National Police (unlike local police forces) "remain mostly a disaster." And they pointed to a lack of progress on the political front in making major steps toward reconciliation as well as the fact that the surge cannot go on forever. Still, the authors concluded that "there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008."

Mr. O'Hanlon and Mr. Pollack are not alone in noting significant military progress in Iraq. New York Times correspondent John Burns has made similar nuanced observations. In addition, liberal Democratic senator Dick Durbin recently observed that the military is, "...making real progress. ... we're putting troops on the ground to intercept al Qaeda."

None of this is to say that everything is going well in Iraq or that the Bush Administration has done a good job in running the war effort for the last four years. And certainly political progress in Iraq has indeed been very slow, with the Iraq parliament divided very much along sectarian lines.

The hope might be for a little less heated rhetoric about Iraq and a little more common ground. There does appear to be reason to believe that the military surge is achieving a more livable Iraq, even if the political progress has been extremely slow. Even Democratic candidates for president are recognizing that a complete withdrawal of United States from Iraq is not feasible in the short run. For its part, no one in the White House or the military is saying that the surge is forever or that American troops should be in Iraq permanently. If there can be a bipartisan concentration on building on the recent successes while holding the Iraq government's feet to the fire, it is possible that the eventual withdrawal from Iraq will be accompanied by a significant measure of success.