Progress 3

The car bombs are deadly and dramatic. But these are not tactics that can win over a population. At least not the local one. The new strategy underway by General Petraeus is showing results. Here is a long article by Max Boot on the progress. It's not over, but it is evidence that things are getting better. As long as they continue to get better, we are winning.

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Until recently Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, was the most dangerous city in Iraq if not the world. It was run by al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which had declared it the capital of its Islamic State of Iraq. The Iraqi police presence was limited to one police station, which the police were afraid to leave. Soldiers and Marines engaged in heavy combat every day, losing hundreds of men since 2003, simply to avoid having insurgents overrun the government center and close down Route Michigan, the main street.

That began to change last year when the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Armored Division expanded the U.S. troop presence on the west side of town, losing almost 90 soldiers in the process. ...

"The price was heavy but worth it," says Colonel John W. Charlton, the burly commander of the 1st Brigade who directed the operations. "The enemy lost massively."

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It is a horrific scene but also a hopeful one. "A few weeks ago you couldn't drive down this street without being attacked. When I went down this street in February, I was hit three times with small-arms fire and IEDs," Colonel Charlton tells me over the intercom system of his up-armored Humvee. Even though this is an unlucky day--Friday the 13th--we do not experience a single attack on our convoy. The only violence the entire day occurs when a rocket lands on the other side of the Euphrates River without hurting anyone. The previous week, Ramadi saw a much-publicized attack--a suicide bomber drove a truck filled with explosives and chlorine gas into a police checkpoint, killing 12 people (not the 27 or more cited in most news accounts). But such violence has become the exception; it used to be the norm. Ramadi, which used to see 20 to 25 attacks a day, now sees an average of 2 to 4 a day--and falling. Entire days go by without a single attack. By the time I visited, no U.S. soldier had been killed in the town for weeks.

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