In the wake of the Iraqi legislature finally agreeing on provincial elections, this Washington Post editorial does a nice job pointing out the folly of Obama’s Iraq policy:
For some time, U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker has been citing provincial elections as the most important of Iraq’s “political benchmarks.” This week’s breakthrough follows others in recent months, including the reform of a law that purged former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party from government posts. More steps are needed — most important, agreement on a law distributing Iraqi oil revenue among provinces and allowing for new investment. But it’s now clear that the political progress that the Bush administration hoped would follow the surge of U.S. forces in Iraq has finally begun. How can the next president preserve that momentum? Democrat Barack Obama continues to argue that only the systematic withdrawal of U.S. combat units will force Iraqi leaders to compromise. Yet the empirical evidence of the past year suggests the opposite: that only the greater security produced and guaranteed by American troops allows a political environment in which legislative deals and free elections are feasible.
Jennifer Rubin has more thoughts on this worth reading, but the bottom line is that it’s getting harder and harder to deny that Obama was profoundly wrong on the surge and Iraq in general.