Mission (partly) accomplished

The Wall Street Journal

President Bush has done better at explaining his Iraq policy of late, but the most eloquent rebuttal to American defeatists came from the millions of Iraqis who voted yesterday for a new parliament. They are now practicing the democracy that the U.S. promised when it deposed Saddam Hussein. This is a great achievement.

Voter turnout was reportedly high across nearly all regions of the country, including such former no-go zones as Fallujah and Tal Afar in the Sunni Triangle. Terrorists managed only scattered attacks, far fewer than in the first round of elections in January.

The rap on January's vote was that Iraq's Sunni Arabs didn't participate, but this time they did and in huge numbers. The rap on October's referendum was that most Sunnis opposed the new Iraq constitution, but this time they voted to have a say in writing any changes to that charter. Jordan's King Abdullah and other neighboring Sunni leaders complain that Iraq's Sunnis are mistreated. But the truth is that yesterday's vote gave Iraq's Sunni Arabs a far larger voice in shaping their government than average Sunnis have in Jordan or Syria, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. ...

The scope of the vote shows again that the insurgency lacks any broad base of support inside Iraq. If a new government is skillful in accommodating Sunni demands for representation and for sharing oil revenues, the terrorist room to operate will further shrink. There's a reason Abu Musab al-Zarqawi worried in a letter last year that "Democracy is coming, and there will be no excuse [for violence] thereafter." The U.S. mission remains only partly accomplished, however, because the terrorists must still be defeated militarily. This is where Senator Joe Biden and others who say that the only solution is "political" are only half right. While power-sharing and compromise are essential to stability, the terrorists and former Saddam fedayeen must still be caught or killed.

"I am still the President of Iraq," Saddam has declared at his trial, and his antics show a man trying to intimidate Iraqis into believing that he and his Baathist "party of the return" will eventually come back to power. He is also trying to motivate his bitter-end supporters, who are only encouraged by the talk of American withdrawal.

Iraqi security forces are taking up more of the military burden, and the new coalition strategy of "clear, hold and build" is denying the insurgents many of their former sanctuaries. But there are still hard places left to clear, notably Ramadi, and those will require the same joint Iraqi-U.S. combat teams that did the job in Tal Afar and Haditha, among other towns. The temptation will be to draw down U.S. troops as more Iraqis stand up and the midterm elections approach.

Certainly Iraqis need to take over whenever possible, but it would be a mistake to bring back U.S. forces before it's clear the insurgency is defeated for the long run.

We're increasingly confident that victory in Iraq is not only possible but likely. The biggest threat to winning now is in Washington, D.C. Let's hope that with their tremendous vote yesterday Iraqis delivered faint-hearted U.S. politicians the necessary dose of fortitude.