THE AL QAEDA GRAVEYARD AND THE TRANSFORMING MIDDLE EAST

In a speech in West Virginia yesterday (3/19), Hillary Clinton described Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, as "an extraordinary leader and a wonderful advocate for our military."

Just seven months ago Sen. Clinton indirectly called Gen. Petraeus a liar (it would, she said, take a "willing suspension of disbelief" to believe what the general was saying about progress in Iraq since the troop surge began). This most recent Clinton flip-flop illustrates the sea change that's happened in Iraq since then.

Last week al Qaeda released a videotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden.  He made no mention of Iraq, which is odd, because the Iraq war began five years ago yesterday, and bombast about Iraq had been the chief subject of his earlier videotapes. 

But on this anniversary there were no threats, no boasts of victory, perhaps because even supporters of al Qaeda would now find such boasts hollow.

Maybe the best indication that things are going better in Iraq is its virtual disappearance from television newscasts.  In the first ten weeks of this year, news of the war accounted for just 3 percent of newspaper and television news stories, compared to 23 percent the year before, according to a survey conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Nearly 4,000 American service members and about 100,000 Iraqis (most of them in the suicide bombings for which al Qaeda has become infamous) have been killed since March 19, 2003.  Has it been worth it?

Iraqis apparently think so.  Last week ABC and the BBC released results of a poll conducted in Iraq last month.  In it 55 percent of Iraqis said their lives were going well, up from 39 percent last August.  Forty nine percent of Iraqis think the U.S. invasion was justified, up from 37 percent in August. 

The Iraqis have been freed from an oppressive tyrant, and are the recipients of billions of dollars of economic aid.  But has it been worth it for us?

The Bush administration had both short and long term strategic goals for invading Iraq; some publicly stated, some not.  All are on the verge of being met.

In the short term, the president wanted to go on offense against al Qaeda, rather than wait passively for another attack.  The most significant fact in the war on terror is there has been no successful attack on our homeland since 9/11.  This is chiefly because most of al Qaeda's energies and resources have been directed elsewhere. 

Iraq has proven to be a graveyard both for al Qaeda's most experienced operators, and for its reputation in the Muslim world.

Also in the short term, Mr. Bush wanted to improve the behavior of Saudi Arabia, and to send a signal to hostile regimes the U.S. military was not to be trifled with.  In the longer term, the president believed the threat would last forever if the Arab world remained dysfunctional.

"The deepest purpose of the Iraq war was to break this pattern, to kick-start reform and political change, economic and cultural modernization and maybe even the first shoots of democracy in the Arab world," writes UPI editor Martin Walker, a Middle East expert.

The war in Iraq has achieved its strategic purpose, says Prof. James Robbins, director of the Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University.  "Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat, and Iraq has a new constitution and a democratically elected government."

It isn't just in Iraq's fledgling democracy where that goal is being achieved, Mr. Walker writes:

"To look at the Middle East today is to see a region transformed.  The center of gravity is no longer the Levant, trapped in the obsession with Israel and the Palestinians, but the Gulf states, where oil is no longer the sole source of wealth.  Dubai as a trading port and tourist center, Qatar as a media and medical center, Saudi Arabia with its new universities, are countries going through a cultural and intellectual revolution."

The cost of the war in Iraq has been high, much higher than it ought to have been because of the many blunders made in prosecuting it.  But the strategy was sound.  And now — thanks chiefly to Gen. Petraeus — a historic, transformational victory is nigh.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.