The War in Iraq Is Over.
What Next?

By BING WEST, Wall
Street Journal
Iraq

The war I witnessed for more than five years in Iraq is over.
In July, there were five American fatalities in Iraq, the lowest since the war
began in March 2003. In Mosul
recently, I chatted with shopkeepers on the same corner where last January a
Humvee was blown apart in front of me. In the Baghdad district of Ghazilia -- where last
January snipers controlled streets awash in human waste -- I saw clean streets
and soccer games. In Basra,
the local British colonel was dining at a restaurant in the center of the
bustling city.

For the first time in 15 trips across the country, I didn't hear
one shot or a single blast from a roadside bomb. In Anbar Province,
scene of the fiercest fighting during the war, the tribal sheiks insisted to
Barack Obama on his recent visit that the U.S. Marines had to stay because they
were the most trusted force.

The war turned around in late 2006 because American troops
partnered with Iraqi forces and tribal auxiliaries to protect the population.
Feeling safe, the population informed on the militias and terrorists living
among them. Then, in the spring of 2008, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
attacked the Mahdi militia of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that
controlled Basra and half of Baghdad. The militia crumbled under pressure
from Iraqi soldiers backed by coalition intelligence and air assets.

The threat in Iraq
has changed from a full-scale insurgency into an antiterror campaign. Al Qaeda
in Iraq is entrenched in
northern Mosul,
where it may take 18 months to completely defeat them. By employing what he
calls his "Anaconda Strategy," Gen. David Petraeus is squeezing the
life out of al Qaeda in Iraq.
The mafia-style militia of Sadr has been splintered.

The competition among Iraqi politicians has shifted from
violence to politics, albeit yielding a track record as poor as that of our own
Congress. After failing for two years to deliver basic services, both Shiite
and Sunni politicians are stalling on legislation to hold provincial elections
because many of them will be defeated. While irritating, these political games
have not blocked U.S.
gains.

Americans should praise rather than slight our military's
achievements. Civil war has been averted. The Iraqi army has thrown the militia
out of the port
of Um Qasar, thus
ensuring stable oil exports. Al Qaeda fought to make Iraq its base in the Arab Middle
East. Instead, it is being hunted down.

Iran has
emerged as the major threat to stability in Iraq. While its goal was to control
a weak Iraq after the
American army was driven out, Tehran
overplayed its hand. Iran
supplied the rockets to attack Iraqi politicians in Baghdad in April and supported Sadr's
militia. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites died fighting Iranians in
the '80s, and those memories are still fresh. In southern Maysan Province,
American and Iraqi units are waiting to hunt down terrorists returning from
Iranian training camps. Iraq,
backed by some American forces in remote desert bases, is poised to emerge as a
regional counterweight to Iran.

Yet the progress in Iraq
is most threatened by a political promise in the U.S. to remove all American combat
brigades, against the advice of our military commanders. Iraqi volunteers
working for a nonsectarian political party in Baghdad asked me, "Is America giving up
its goals?" It's an unsettling question.

With victory in sight, why would we quit? The steady -- but not
total -- withdrawal of U.S.
troops from Iraq is freeing
up forces to fight in Afghanistan.
But Afghanistan
is not the central front in the war on terror. Al Qaeda is hiding in Pakistan, a
nation we are not going to invade.

The Iraqis aren't yet confident enough to stand entirely on
their own; al Qaeda's savagery still imposes too much fear, while Iran is
training terrorists next door. In counterinsurgency, the people must know they
are protected. Gen. Petraeus has proven that intimidation can be defeated by
placing American soldiers among the population. Wars are won by confidence, but
also by procedures that take time to mature; and the Iraqi offensive against
Sadr's militia in Basra
last April revealed an atrocious Iraqi command and control system.

We are withdrawing as conditions permit. For instance, in the
infamous Triangle of Death south of Baghdad,
Col. Dominic
Caraccilo has spread his rifle companies across 22 police precincts. Over the
next year, he plans to pull out two of every three companies, leaving the
population protected by Iraqi forces, backed by a thin screen of American
soldiers.

If implemented on a countrywide scale, this model would reduce
the American presence from 15 to five brigades over the next few years. They
can be comprised of artillerymen, motor transport and civil affairs as well as
infantrymen. By calling these residual forces "Transition Teams," we
can remove the political argument in the U.S. about the exact number of
combat brigades, and allow our commanders flexibility in adjusting force
levels. This change of names rather than of missions is a way to save face and
bring Americans closer together.

The problem is not American force levels in Iraq. It is
divisiveness at home. While our military has adapted, our society has
disconnected from its martial values. I was standing beside an Iraqi colonel
one day in war-torn Fallujah when a tough Marine patrol walked by. "You
Americans," he said, "are the strongest tribe."

But we cast aspersions on ourselves. The success of our military
should not be begrudged to gain transitory political advantage.

In 1991, our nation held a parade after our military liberated Kuwait. Over
the course of more than five hard years, our troops have brought stability and
freedom to 25 million Iraqis, while crushing al Qaeda in Iraq.
Regardless of disagreement about initiating the war back in 2003, Americans
should unite to applaud the success of our troops in 2008.

A stable Iraq
keeps faith with the million American soldiers who fought there, sets back Iran's aggression, and makes our enemies in Afghanistan and
elsewhere fear us. It's time we stopped debating about yesterday and displayed
national pride in our soldiers.

Mr. West is a former assistant secretary of defense and
combat Marine. His third book on the Iraq
war, "The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics and the Endgame in Iraq," is
out today from Random House.