Progress in Iraq

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 — With the Democratic-led Congress poised to measure progress in Iraq by focusing on the central government’s failure to perform, President Bush is proposing a new gauge, by focusing on new American alliances with the tribes and local groups that Washington once feared would tear the country apart.

That shift in emphasis was implicit in Mr. Bush’s decision to bypass Baghdad on his eight-hour trip to Iraq, stopping instead in Anbar Province, once the heart of an anti-American Sunni insurgency. By meeting with tribal leaders who just a year ago were considered the enemy, and who now are fighting Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a president who has unveiled four or five strategies for winning over Iraqis — depending on how one counts — may now be on the cusp of yet another.

The reason that the tribal leaders are now allies instead of enemies is twofold. One part is that the new counterinsurgency strategy (the surge) is working and the other is that al Qaeda has made itself loathsome to the Iraqi people. By both their thuggish brutality and the grim and joyless brand of Islam they practice.

The US is now seen as the more attractive side and, far more importantly, the side most likely to win. This makes the decision to bet on America almost automatic.

The truth is that the original benchmarks which depended upon the Iraqi central government getting its house in order and the effect of that "trickling down" to the rest of the society was never realistic. In the overall culture of the Middle East you join the side that looks like it is going to win. Iraqi politicians needed to have some clear indication of which side, America or al Qaeda, was going to come out on top before they committed themselves.

The only thing now that can stop further progress in Iraq is the American left working through their elected representatives in congress and their propaganda organs in the mainstream media.