Petraeus, an appreciation

Petraeus did something astonishing here. It wasn’t simply managing the “surge” of U.S. troops, whose precise effects military historians will be debating for years. It was that he restored confidence and purpose for a military that had begun to think, deep down, that this war was unwinnable and unsustainable.

By force of will, Petraeus and his president, George W. Bush, turned that around. They didn’t win in Iraq, but they created the possibility of an honorable exit…

What’s clear … even in a brief visit here, are signs that the Iraqi nation is regaining its sense of sovereignty: You see it in the new swagger of Iraqi generals such as Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, the commander of Baghdad, a beefy man in a red beret and gaudy camouflage uniform; in the in-your-face bargaining by Iraqi politicians over the status-of-forces agreement with the United States; in the political dance of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who goes from a meeting with Gates to an iftar dinner with followers of former insurgent Moqtada al-Sadr.

Iraq is still a bruised country. It will bleed for years. But the very fact that it is still a country at all is a tribute to a remarkable American general and his insistence that “hard is not hopeless.”