Victory at Gandamak?

If you need a reality check - go back to JUL 07 and see where we were. Almost everyone but GWB and a few others were ready to quit.

There was a time when few others would come out to support and many others had already admitted defeat, had hit the mattresses or had fallen into great despair.

I referred to this time as Gandamak; a place where the 44th Foot stood their ground to the end. That is the way I was starting to feel as the pro-Victory crowd thinned to almost nothing - and defeat was the direction that the President-elect and his Party wanted us to go.

Looks like we won just in time. From Instapundit,

"THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON:" Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. "There's nothing going on. I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on. I've been walking my feet off and haven't seen anything. I've been asking Iraqis, 'do you think the violence will kick up again,' but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they're usually dour." There's a little bit of violence here and there, but nothing that's a threat to the general situation. Plus, not only the Iraqi Army, but even the National Police are well thought of by the populace. Training from U.S. toops has paid off, he says, in building a rapport.

He says the big problem everybody is talking about now is corruption. But hey, we have that here, too. He'll be heading to Afghanistan next week. "Afghanistan is a bad situation, but on Iraq I can't believe things have turned out so well."

He thinks that Obama will be able to pull troops out, and send some to Afghanistan, without creating problems in Iraq. Michael will be reporting from Afghanistan soon, and sending back video, so stay tuned. Things aren't going swimmingly there.

In the darkest times, one of the few bloggers out there that I felt covering my stern at Gandamak - Greyhawk.

I've been saying "we won" for some time now, so no argument on that point from me.
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Folks who are arriving late to the "war is over and we won" bandwagon might want to get caught up. There are several places you could start here, but I suggest my post-election outlook for Iraq. It might be a bitter pill to swallow for Republicans, but therein I'll explain how you fumbled at the goal line.

Skippy, you owe me a beer.

Now, back to Afghanistan and fix what we allowed NATO to let fester.