Winning the War

Tom Bevan, RCP Blog:

The most conspicuous part of today's op-ed on Iraq by Michael E. O'Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack is that it comes off as such a revelation. Here we have two of the harshest critics of the Bush administration's execution of the war reporting back with a tone of wonderment at the progress we're making on the ground in Iraq:

Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration's critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Read it all. Video interview and background here as well. And a new Pew poll on changing attitudes among some Muslim countries. Michael Barone:

Perhaps most importantly, the Pew Global survey showed sharply reduced numbers of Muslims saying that suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified as compared with 2002. That's still the view of 70 percent in the Palestinian territories. But that percentage has declined from 74 percent to 34 percent in Lebanon, from 43 percent to 23 percent in Jordan, and from 33 percent to 9 percent in Pakistan.

Now if we could only get some improvement on the culture front here. Christopher Hitchens on the incident at Pace University and the current leaders in the global book-burning competition.

UPDATE: And is this a big problem for Democrats? WaPo here.

UPDATE: More from The Trib's The Swamp:

The two military and security analysts behind the piece, both at the Brookings Institution, have deep Democratic ties. Kenneth Pollack worked in the National Security Council in the Clinton White House, and Michael O'Hanlon, among other things, advised the 2004 presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry. [snip]

Also, polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of Americans don't want a quick pull out from Iraq if that means increased chaos in that country and the region.

So while it may appeal to the most anti-war base of the Democratic Party to talk of immediate draw-downs and letting the Iraqis handle their own civil war, Pollack and O'Hanlon have ensured that when congressional leaders and presidential candidates throw out such applause lines, they will be challenged and not with President Bush's words but those of two of the best-known, security-minded Democrats in Washington.