JUST A MATTER OF NOT SCREWING UP WHAT MOOKIE AND W BEQUEATHED THEM:

Did Obama win the Iraq War?: Let's give credit where it's due (Juan Cole, 1/20/10, Salon)

The Iraqi military and police, over which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had largely gained control, proved able to keep order about as well as had their American and British colleagues. In July 2009, with the U.S. no longer patrolling, attacks and deaths declined by a third, and went on down from there. Despite two dramatic bombing waves in the capital, in August and November, the situation has in most places calmed down on an everyday basis. Flashpoints such as Mosul and Kirkuk remain, but had been violent when the U.S. military was there, too.

Most Americans do not realize that U.S. troops seldom patrol or engage in combat in Iraq anymore, accounting for why none were killed in hostile action in December. The total number of U.S. troops in Iraq has fallen from a maximum of 160,000 during the Bush administration's "surge" to about 110,000. After the early March parliamentary elections, another big withdrawal will begin, bringing then number down to 50,000 or so non-combat troops by Sept. 1.

Critics of Obama often charge him with failing to end the Iraq war. But there is no longer an Iraq war. There are U.S. bases in a country where indigenous forces are still fighting a set of low-intensity struggles, with little U.S. involvement. Obama is having his troops leave exactly as quickly as the Iraqi parliament asked him to. Most U.S. troops in Iraq seem mainly to be in the moving business now, shipping out 1.5 million pieces of equipment.

The last 4,000 Marines will hand over responsibility for al-Anbar Province, once among the more violent places on earth, to the U.S. Army on Saturday, and shortly thereafter the Marines will depart the country.

U.S. narratives of how Baghdad and environs calmed down -- relatively speaking -- leave out the victory of the Shiites in the civil war fought 2006-2007, and the ethnic cleansing of most Sunni Arabs from Baghdad. Despite the continued possibility of terrorism, the demoralized and defeated Sunnis seem unlikely to be able or willing to organize for a repeat of the civil war any time soon. (Sunni Arabs are probably less than 20 percent of the population, whereas Shiites are about 60 percent, something the Sunnis long denied, a denial that made them overconfident they could defeat the majority.) In the meantime, Iraqi military capacity seems just barely adequate to security tasks outside a few hotspots such as Mosul.