Progress report.(AT WAR)(David Petraeus' report on Iraq)

Gen. David Petraeus gave his September progress report on the surge to Congress. For months, Democrats had hoped that political support for the war would collapse after his report. Instead, he and Amb. Ryan Crocker gave a sober account of clear military progress and the realistic possibility of eventual political improvements to help make it stick. Their testimony bought more time for President Bush.

Bush instantly endorsed Petraeus's recommendation for a drawdown of roughly 5,700 troops by December, toward a goal of withdrawing all the additional troops who were part of the surge by July. That drawdown would bring us from the current 160,000 to 130,000. Starting the withdrawals by December is not ideal and increases our risks on the ground, but Petraeus likely was placating the Joint Chiefs, who are protective of the institutional interests of the services and blanch at the strain the Iraq War has put on the military. Bush emphasized that the troop withdrawals would be based on conditions in Iraq, and Petraeus wisely counseled that any plan for withdrawal beneath 130,000 be put off until next March, since we are involved in a dynamic, unpredictable war.

The indicators of progress on the security front in Iraq are undeniable, although Petraeus was accused of using "cooked statistics." Awar zone isn't exactly an MIT statistics class, so reliable numbers are hard to come by. But figures from American, Iraqi, and private sources all show a decline in violence. Petraeus was said to ignore Sunni-on-Sunni and Shiite-on-Shiite violence in his figures, but he included them in the category of total civilian deaths, which have declined (he excluded them from the count of sectarian killings, which is obviously correct). He was also bizarrely (and falsely) accused of counting as sectarian murders only bodies found shot in the front of the head, not in the back.

Critics of the war tend to dismiss the military progress as inevitable--we always knew, they say, that adding troops would increase security. When Bush announced the surge at the beginning of the year, of course, the tenor of their comments suggested otherwise. They also say that the military progress won't be sustainable without political progress, a commonplace endorsed by both Petraeus and Crocker.

What the critics ignore is that the tribal revolt that has so improved our situation in Anbar and elsewhere is political progress. Sunnis in those places are siding with us rather than the insurgency. This shift in allegiances has made it possible to achieve some of the intended ...