For those who took issue with the unfounded editorializing in James Fallows’ recent Atlantic piece about the Iraqi Army, allow me to recommend a much better one I just finished reading by Jonathan Foreman in that journal of conservative thought, Vanity Fair. Foreman, formerly embedded with the “Hellraisers” of the Third Infantry when they helped take Baghdad in April of 2003, returns to Iraq to find them engaged in training the Iraqi Army. Despite the setbacks the unit faces as its leaders struggle to overcome cultural divides and intractable bureaucracies, the article is an amazing success story that traces the training of one battalion of Iraqi Army recruits. As the weeks pass, the recruits “look more like soldiers and less like extras shambling around a movie set,” and American trainers spot the ones who will be valuable leaders in the future. But above all, Foreman chronicles the “un-ironic gung-ho attitude that is remarkably common in combat units” in Iraq who remain dedicated to the mission and know that we’re winning — sometimes, as one captain puts it, in spite of ourselves. But winning nonetheless.