The NYT has published back-to-back articles about how the military is turning things around in Iraq. First, Dexter Filkins published this article in the New York Times Magazine. The article is billed on the cover as “The U.S. Military Gets It Right, Too Late.” I didn’t think the piece was as pessimistic as that headline suggested. Filkins noted that sectarian violence might have progressed to the point where the military can’t turn things around, but he didn’t declare defeat inevitable. He charted progress in the military’s methods for dealing with the insurgency and praised the new strategies of the commanders who are training the Iraqi forces to police their own country.

Today, Thom Shanker followed with a front-page piece about the new Iraqi Counterterrorism Force — an elite unit that’s taking over more responsibility from the American soldiers in fighting the insurgency. The tone of the piece is cautiously optimistic — “The Iraqi special operations forces are rapidly moving toward self-sufficiency,” Shanker writes, though “it is clear that American troops will have to stay in Iraq for some time to come.”

Usually, you can count on the New York Times editorial board for a knee-jerk liberal reaction on almost any issue, except a few where doing so would put them in opposition to their more influential writers. For instance, op-ed star Thomas Friedman is a passionate advocate for trade liberalization, and NYT editorials on that subject often read like Friedman columns — even though most liberals favor protectionist policies for their union pals. The question in my mind after reading the NYT’s latest coverage of the war is whether the NYT ed board will start listening to star reporters like Filkins and acknowledge that the military is doing things right in Iraq.