On Monday the United States officially returned all security duties for Anbar province to Iraqi police and military. The collapse of the Sunni insurgency there now appears to be almost total, with attacks having declined 90% from only two years ago.
The progress is perhaps best illustrated by this dramatic chart from the New York Times:
(NYT via BlogsforVictory)
Is 2006, 1968? The year the antiwar movement stopped paying attention to developments on the ground in the war, as Creighton Abrams’ Vietnamization strategy or Petraeus’ “Iraqification” approach later worked so spectacularly well? With their continued opposition to ongoing stabilization efforts, it certainly seems like a great many in the antiwar left are still captives of that dramatic and pivotal year.