The surge is working
Red State has a good post about the surge in Iraq. They link over to a story in a New York Times blog post entitled “Taking Back a Qaeda Stronghold” that notes,
Jihadists flourished here, American commanders say, manufacturing car bombs and sending them up the road for the short trip into the capital.
But last year, violence fell drastically. American commanders cite three main reasons: the United States troop surge, which provided the combat power to take on the insurgents, the decision to withdraw troops from large bases far outside Iraqi towns and put them closer to the population, and the decision by local Sunnis to follow the model of the Anbar Province tribal Awakening by turning against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and cooperating with the Americans to fight it.
The town that the blogger is describing is Arab Jabour, which was once an al Qaeda stronghold. As Red State points out, if we were to leave when Senator Obama wants us to, it would make it easier for al Qaeda to take this area back.