Have We Won the Iraq War?

Starfish, of Religious Forums, quotes Michael Yon's contention that for all intents and purposes the war in Iraq is finished and the United States has been victorious:

"The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What's left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it's time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won."

Starfish didn't go on to give an interpretation of the validity or meaning of those quotation. He merely left it there to settle in and annoy the liberals.

Troublemane contends that,

I predict there will be a declaration of victory by september, october at the latest, if only to deprive the obama camp of the privalege. there may be some optimism that mccain will win (not likely) but i think the polls are showing a greater probability obama will win, so---that means (just to be on the safe side) victory will be declared before the election, just to ensure bush gets the glory.

Not a bad contention, even though I don't think such an obvious ploy would go over well with our troops or the American people. No one wants to think of our military action as politically driven, and when we do, we tend to get rather pissed off about it.

I think we are a long way off from victoriously securing a democratic and peaceful Iraq, which seems to be our current military objective. Did the surge work? Of course it did and things are much better now than they were two years ago, but we've still got no viable exit strategy. Regardless of what the Bush Administration does in its waning days of its' White House occupancy, the future of Iraq will be left to the next occupant to deal with.