The events of fall 2006 did require a new American strategy after the February 2006 Samarra Mosque bombing that triggered sectarian killings on a larger scale, but we had made progress in Iraq through that horrible event. And even as killings rose following that bombing, we still made progress in preparing Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar to flip to our side, which would be a key part of our new strategy in the surge.
Our prior victories of 2003 to 2005 weren't nullified by the new challenges of 2006 through fall 2007, but we did have to defeat that new challenge. And we did.
If you doubt that in 2005 it looked like we could wrap up the war with victory rather than just being another year of fiasco yet to be redeemed by a gamble, recall that some began to see improvements in the Middle East as a result of our apparent win in Iraq during 2005:
The mood at the White House, on Capitol Hill and in the punditocracy has been transformed. The weapons of mass destruction fiasco is forgotten, the deaths of US troops have slipped from the front pages. Even Senator Edward Kennedy, bitter Democratic critic of the invasion, admits that Mr Bush deserves credit "for what seemed to be a tentative awakening of democracy in the region".
Or were the Lebanese impressed by our fiasco?
So today, after beating down the attempt to ignite civil war and going on to win in Iraq with our Iraqi and Coalition allies, we again see a tenative awakening of democracy in the region with Iranian demonstrators protesting the regime.
President Bush made this awakening possible. Can President Obama see it through and nourish it?
