James S. Robbins
There is no question that on the ground the war is being won. Baghdad is becoming more secure. Iraqi tribal leaders and even some insurgent groups are turning against al Qaeda in Iraq and other outsiders who are pursuing their own violent agenda and who care nothing for the people of Iraq. The activities of Iran, Syria, and other counties supporting the insurgency are coming under increasing scrutiny and public censure. Iraqi military and police forces are fielding thousands of new, trained recruits every month. The government of Iraq may not be addressing all of the legislative initiatives we would like them to, such as the energy law and sorting out power sharing in their federal structure; but it took our country 75 years to come to grips with the contradictions inherent in our Constitution, and with a great deal more violence. We can give them time.

The weak link in the war effort is in the U.S. Congress. Politically driven assessments that downplay the progress of the war, pandering to antiwar groups, and a public that has tuned out, add up to grave difficulties in sustaining the war effort. Given more time, the progress in Iraq will become so clear as to be undeniable, and the troop drawdown could commence on more favorable terms. There is a significant difference between withdrawal in the face of adversity and redeployment after meeting our stated objectives. It is the difference between defeat and victory.

— James S. Robbins is the director of the Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University and author of Last in Their Class: Custer, Picket and the Goats of West Point. Robbins is also an NRO contributor.


Peter W. Rodman
No one should underestimate the power of boredom as a determinant of journalistic opinion: When doomsaying becomes commonplace, the novelty factor works in favor of optimism. Objective reality is a necessary condition for today’s more hopeful assessments in Iraq, but it is never sufficient. It has been apparent for a while that the president’s “surge” is helping stabilize the military situation. That analysts like Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack are prepared to affirm it clearly after visiting Iraq is to their great credit. Journalists not driven by anti-Bush animus may now want to herd in the more positive direction.

The next question is how our domestic politics will absorb this new perception. On its face, it strengthens the President and complicates the Democrats’ internal divisions. Doomsayers will zero in on Iraqi failures in the political dimension; these failures, I hope, reflect only a time lag before improved security conditions boost the self-confidence and political strength of Iraqi moderates. Those in this country determined on abandoning Iraq will always find excuses. But, finally, the improved mood — and reality — should embolden Republicans to help the president hold the line through the (totally artificial) interim reckoning scheduled for September.

— Peter W. Rodman, a former NR senior editor, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served until recently as assistant secretary of Defense for international-security affairs.


Joseph Morrison Skelly
The answer to all three questions posed by this timely symposium is, I believe, a qualified “yes.” With regard to the first query — is there “some kind of mood change afoot?” — it is important to distinguish between the war’s harshest critics, its wavering skeptics, and its steadfast supporters. There has not been a mood change among the war’s vehement antagonists, but the essay by Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack is indicative of a begrudging acceptance of the tentative progress in Iraq by some of the war’s agnostics. While the war’s critics will, alas, never accept the new facts on the ground nor will their demeanor change under any circumstances, something akin to a mood swing among the war’s skeptics will follow continued improvement in Iraq. As this scenario unfolds it is likely that they will catch up with the war’s stalwart supporters, whose faith, long tested by the tough going and long derided by the war’s critics, is now being vindicated.

“Could we really can win this war?” Yes, with victory defined not as perfection, but as a stable Iraq at peace with itself, respectful of its neighbors, and an ally in the War against Islamic Terrorism. After several years of searching for a viable strategy, the United States military, its Coalition allies and its Iraqi counterparts are now waging a campaign based upon some of the tried and tested principles of counterinsurgency warfare that have been newly updated for the twenty-first century. The battle plan is encapsulated in the U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, which was drafted by a team led by General David Petraeus and is now being published by the University of Chicago Press. Kudos must also go to defense analysts who laid out the theoretical basis for the surge, including Fred Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a former professor of military history at West Point, and the author of an important new book on this subject, Finding the Target. Most of all, it is the soldiers on the ground who are turning the tide in Iraq. Michael Yon is detailing their success in Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Diyala in a series of compelling dispatches. Further west, the accomplishments of the Marines in Anbar province, with Army and Air Force support, has been remarkable; when the story of this war is written, their victory will loom large.

The momentum on the battlefield means that it is now likely that Operation Iraqi Freedom will be won or lost on the home front in America, thus lending immediacy to the question “Could the rhetoric in Washington really change?” The answer: perhaps. The critics of this war will never alter their tune, since they have so much invested in failure. But the rhetoric of the skeptics may change gradually. Like the national mood, it will be influenced by events on the ground. Should progress continue, people will wish to be associated with it. We will thus witness the truth inherent in the well known adage, “Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s foreign minister, first used this formula in 1942 as World War II inexorably shifted against the Fascists, and President John F. Kennedy paraphrased it in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs debacle, increasing the number of fathers to one thousand. During the trying times of the past several years, President Bush has often stood alone in Washington, the orphaned architect of what many critics assumed to be a certain defeat, but perhaps he will soon be joined by the city’s skeptics, whose rhetoric will improve as they align themselves with the vast majority of Americans who already believe we can win. Some may view their reaction as cynical, and to a certain extent this is true, but it is also natural, people wish to be linked with success. Welcome the skeptics aboard. What matters in the long run is that we win. When that happens, victory in Mesopotamia will have not one hundred or one thousand, but millions of fathers, American and Iraqi alike, all of whom can take pride in what they have achieved.

— Joseph Morrison Skelly is an academic fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.

Michael Yon
I am in broad agreement with most of the article by O’Hanlon and Pollack and, in fact, have been reporting in writing, on national radio, and most recently on Good Morning America that I have been seeing remarkable positive changes in Iraq.

I asked General Petraeus last night for his opinion of the current situation. General Petraeus responded with: “Our assessment at this point is that we have begun to achieve a degree of momentum on the ground in going after AQI sanctuaries and in disrupting the activities of some of the militia extremists; however, AQI continues to try to reignite ethno-sectarian violence and clearly still has the capability to carry out sensational attacks that cause substantial civilian loss of life. And the militia elements certainly continue to pursue sectarian displacement in certain fault-line areas and to cause trouble in some Shia provinces as well. So there’s clearly considerable work to be done by Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces. Beyond that, the spread of Sunni Arab rejection of AQI is very important and is a development on which we are still trying to capitalize beyond Anbar Province, where the effects are already very clear.”

In fact, I have had the feeling for more than a month that top U.S. leadership in Iraq has been being cautious not to show too much optimism at this time. However, I have seen changes with my own eyes in Nineveh, Anbar, and Diyala that are more fundamental than just winning battles. In Nineveh, the enemies of a united Iraq are still strong and vibrant, but the Iraqi army and police in Nineveh clearly are improving faster than the enemy is improving. In other words, the Iraqi Security Forces are winning that particular race. Out in Anbar, the shift actually began to occur last year while Special Forces and other less-than-visible operators, along with conventional forces such as the Marines, began harnessing the mood-shift of the tribes. Whereas in Nineveh the fight has been more like a race and test of endurance, in Anbar the outcome was more like an avalanche. Parts of Diyala, such as Baqubah, witnessed avalanche-like positive changes beginning on June 19 with Operation Arrowhead Ripper. I witnessed the operation and was given full access. However, other areas in Diyala remain serious problems. I have seen firsthand many sectarian issues. There remains civil war in parts of Diyala (largely thanks to AQI). Down in Basra, a completely different problem-set faces the British who themselves are facing tough choices.

Skipping past the blow-by-blow and getting to the bottom line: I sense there has been a fundamental shift in Iraq. One officer called it a “change in the seas,” and I believe his words were accurate. Something has changed. The change is fundamental, and for once seems positive. And so, back to the O’Hanlon-Pollack story in the New York Times, “A War We Just Might Win,” I agree.

— Michael Yon is an independent writer, photographer, and former Green Beret who was embedded in Iraq for nine months in 2005. He has returned to Iraq for 2007 to continue reporting on the war. He is entirely reader supported and publishes his work at www.michaelyon-online.com.

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