Turnaround? (CM)

Military historian Victor Davis Hanson, just back from Iraq, writes:

[T]he news coverage of the sudden turnaround is lagging behind rapidly changing events on the ground, which, as in all wars, explode sometimes without warning and immediate full appreciation.

One thought in this context. It is of course true that the surge is working and our soldiers are far more sophisticated than in 2003. But in all the places one visits, there are reminders everywhere — pockmarked walls, rubble, memorial photos in bases — of all those killed during the worst ordeal between 2003-6. When one walks through these former battlefields, there is an eerie melancholy, a ghostly archaeology, a sense that now unnamed and largely anonymous Americans paid the ultimate price in those years to allow the opportunities we witness today. And that’s why we must continue and finish the job they started.

We at home really either chose not to follow the daily pulse of the battlefield, or our media finds it less lucrative or politically correct, or our leaders either don’t have the skill or the desire to get the American people engaged.

It’s a pity because we might well be witnessing an historic change in Iraq that would have profound effects throughout the region. The Iraqis are just beginning to step up effectively to their own defense, and are reaching out to the Americans-rather than solely vice versa as was mostly true between 2003-6. The result is that in a once frightening place like Ramadi — declared “beyond repair” in 9/06 in a sober and carefully written Marine intelligence report — Marine casualties have plummeted, reconstruction is underway, and everyone seems to be a bit dazed about the sudden calm after the horrific past storm — and whether it will continue.

More here.