OP-Ed: "The Remains of That Day," by Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal, 13 September 2007, p. A16.

I don't agree, but it's a great expression of the flip-side argument:

Petraeus' COIN is working.
AQI is weakened.
Both efforts require lots of troops for a long time.
Americans are bored with Iraq, and debates over troop levels don't excite them.
The only "fresh, forward-moving issue' of the hearings came from Joe Lieberman: "whether we should crack back at Iran."

The glass half full, with casualties dismissed, of course, and the casual slipping-in on Iran as the next war.

Get used to that message: Iraq is just fine and Iran is next.

Deny either and you're soft on defense.

And we wonder why so much of the world thinks we've left the ranch for good.

This is war within the context of nothing.

Our strategic debate on the Long War has devolved to the point of gibberish. We're still playing "Who's next?"

Accumulating enemies while losing friends is exactly how you lose a long war.