It’s more and more clear that opponents of the war made a colossal strategic misjudgment in opposing the surge. Obama says the surge is a “tactical victory imposed upon a huge strategic blunder.” This is the wrong way to look at it. We suffered from tactical blunders prior to 2006 that Obama and Co. wanted to transform into a massive strategic defeat by hastily exiting Iraq and letting the country collapse in our absence. The surge saved us from that fate and now we can contemplate three strategic victories in Iraq: 1) Having removed Saddam Hussein and his threat to the region (obviously already accomplished); 2) Defeating al Qaeda in the Arab heartland in a blow to the terror group’s prestige and ideology world-wide (this outcome now seems quite likely); 3) Establishing a stable, imperfectly democratic ally of the United States in a hugely important region of the world (still up in the air, but seems more likely every day).