AS WE STAND DOWN, THEY STAND UP:

A Changing Iraq: Newfound optimism. (Victor Davis Hanson, 10/11/07, National Review)

Why the change?

Officers offered a number of theories. The surge of American troops, and Gen. David Petraeus’s risky tactics of going after the terrorists within their enclaves, have put al Qaeda on the run. Likewise, in the past four years, the U.S. military has killed thousands of these terrorists and depleted their ranks.

Sunnis — angry over their loss of power to the historically discriminated-against Shiites — discovered their al Qaeda allies to be worse than their Shiite rivals. We forget that jihadists drew in not merely religious fanatics but also repulsive common criminals and psychopaths who extort, butcher, and mutilate innocents.

Iraqis of all tribes and sects are also growing tired of the nihilistic violence that is squandering the opportunity for something better than Saddam’s rule. The astronomical spike in oil prices has resulted in windfall profits of billions of dollars for the Iraqi government — and with it the realization that Iraq could someday become a wealthy advanced state.

Iraqis told me that their widely held fear that Americans are going to leave soon has galvanized Sunnis to finally step up to secure their country or face even worse chaos in our absence.

The result is that ordinary Iraqis are increasingly willing to participate in local government and civil defense. Such popular engagement from the bottom up offers more hope than the old 2003 idea that a democratically elected government could simply mandate reform top down from their enclaves in the Green Zone.

So we are at yet another turning point in the constantly changing saga of Iraq.

Provided that we do start leaving and force them to stand on their own.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 11, 2007 7:49 AM