A lesson has been learned. The lighter, faster response military model advocated by Donald Rumsfeld has it’s place, but not when dealing with a vicisously sectarian, force focused culture. In other words, Bush’s surge is showing consistent, trend-worthy results, not least in the area of record low American casualty figures

Of the 21 fatalities this month, 14 have been combat related. Since the surge, even Iraqi security force fatalities are signficantly down. al Qaeda is disbanding, and American, Iraqi and coalition losses are shrinking. Hopefully, with increasingly more breathing room, the Iraqi politicians can produce some statesmen, and establish a working federal government.

The most impressive part of the new information coming out of Iraq is the utter and nearly total defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, and even more encouraging, that American officials are convinced that al Qaeda, not sectarian violence, is presently the main concern in the country. Iraq is not in the midst of a civil war. It is not Vietnam. In fact, the dissimilarities have been there since the beginning. Unless, of course, you were a bit slow on the uptake, and part of the Democrat leadership. Harry Reid, circa February, 2007

After months of heated rhetoric slamming President Bush’s Iraq policy, the Senate’s top Democrat moved into new terrain by declaring the Iraq war a worse blunder than Vietnam.

“This war is a serious situation. It involves the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country,” Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, told CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.”

“So we should take everything seriously. We find ourselves in a very deep hole and we need to find a way to dig out of it.”

Asked whether he considers it a worse blunder than Vietnam, Reid responded, “Yes.”

Comparisons to Vietnam are nothing new, but a “worse than” designation from a top lawmaker is.

Reid never supported the surge, by the way.

When Iraq’s government is stable and fully functioning, Joe Lieberman will be the only Democrat to thank. And for a time, even he was kicked to the curb.

As a side note to the topic of winning in Iraq, do you really want to vote for “abandon the world, now” Ron Paul? Or, for that matter, the apologizing Mike Huckabee, who wants to further destabilize Pakistan, and now fears a Pakistani immigrant invasion?

Foreign policy is too important in 2008 to not occupy billing number one on everyone’s political radar - well, it’s always too important, actually. It’s the lack of a foreign policy as the discussion de jour in the nineties that has exacerbated some problems in the 2000s.  Even with Paul and Huckabee, and Obama, it’s not the lack of foreign policy experience that bothers me about them, but more so an apparent lack of judgment.