Everyone’s heard the cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ve often agreed with that but I can’t this time. This picture is worth much more than that.

PunditReview Radio’s Kevin has some thoughts on Time’s Man of the Year choice that you’ll want to read.

It’s worth noting that the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol got it right in naming the real Man of the Year.

I remember the excitement. It was the week before Christmas a year ago, and I had lazily picked up my copy of Time magazine. And there it was: Time’s Person of the Year for 2006 is “You.”

Wow! We deserved credit, Time judged, “for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game.” Thanks, Time!

And thanks for not choosing the obvious alternative–Nancy Pelosi, who had led the Democratic takeover of Congress. That takeover, Time editors and many others hoped, heralded our withdrawal from Iraq.

However much they may have desired that outcome, Time was lucky not to select Pelosi. In the subsequent 12 months, she and her colleagues failed to impose a defeat in Iraq. Instead, President Bush announced a new strategy and a new commander, General David Petraeus, in January 2007. And all the real achievements of this year belong to them.

We are now winning the war. To say this was not inevitable is an understatement. Even those of us who were early advocates and strong supporters of the surge, and who thought it could succeed, knew the situation had so deteriorated that success was by no means guaranteed. Two military experts told me early in 2007 that they thought the odds of success were, respectively, 1-in-3 and 1-in-4. They nonetheless supported the surge because, even at those odds, it was a gamble worth taking, so devastating would be the consequences of withdrawal and defeat. We at THE WEEKLY STANDARD thought the chances of success were better than 50-50, but that it remained a difficult proposition.

Petraeus pulled it off. The war is not over, of course. Too quick and deep a drawdown–which some in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the Bush administration are, appallingly, pushing for–could throw away the amazing success that has been achieved. Still: It is as clear as anything can be in this world, where we judge through a glass darkly, that General David H. Petraeus is, in fact, America’s man of the year.

It’s great seeing Bill Kristol’s clear-headedd thinking about Iraq. It’s a shame that the elite media won’t admit that Gen. Petraeus’ growing list of accomplishments is remarkable. I don’t believe that they don’t know this. Instead, they, like their allies in the Democratic Party, can’t admit to these successes because that’d mean that they’d have to admit that President Bush’s decision paid off.

The editors couldn’t acknowledge their mugging by reality. That’s fine. Nonetheless, reality exists. And the reality is that in Iraq, after mistakes and failures, thanks to the leadership of Bush, Petraeus, and General Ray Odierno–the day-to-day commander whose contributions shouldn’t be overlooked–we are winning.

The reality is also this: The counterinsurgency campaign that Petraeus and Odierno conceived and executed in 2007 was as comprehensive a counterinsurgency strategy as has ever been executed. The heart of the strategy was a brilliant series of coordinated military operations throughout the entire theater. Petraeus and Odierno used conventional U.S. forces, Iraqi military and police, and Iraqi and U.S. Special Operations forces to strike enemy strongholds throughout Iraq simultaneously, while also working to protect the local populations from enemy responses. Successive operations across the theater knocked the enemy–both al Qaeda and Sunni militias, and Shia extremists–off balance and then prevented them from recovering. U.S. and Iraqi forces, supported by local citizens, chased the enemy from area to area, never allowing them the breathing space to reestablish safe havens, much less new bases. It wasn’t “whack-a-mole” or “squeezing the water balloon” as some feared (and initially claimed)–it was the relentless pursuit of an increasingly defeated enemy.

In other words, Petraeus’ plan and Odierno’s execution of that plan has been nothing short of brilliant. As a result, Iraq is being transformed bit by bit. (I’ll readily admit that some of those bits are fairly large.) Without this radical change in direction, there wouldn’t have been an Anbar Awakening, which is currently spreading throughout Iraq.

That defeat has implications far beyond Iraq. In 2007, Iraq’s Sunni Arabs fought with us against al Qaeda, and Iraq’s Shia Arabs joined with us to fight Iranian-backed Shia militias. So much for the notion that Americans were doomed to fail in their efforts to mobilize moderate Muslims against jihadists. The progress in Iraq in 2007 represents a strategic breakthrough for the broader Middle East whose importance would be hard to overstate.

While Gen. Petraeus and Gen. Odierno get the full credit for developing and executing a brilliant plan, it wouldn’t be right to not recognize President Bush’s part in this. Years from now, President Bush will be given great credit for changing the face of the Middle East. That’s because he believed, like Ronald Reagan before him, that freedom is the yearning of every human heart. That conviction drove his Iraq policy. Without that big picture perspective, none of this wouild’ve happened.

This year of incredible accomplishments in Iraq says one thing: that Gen. David Petraeus is the Man of the Year. That’s undeniable fact. Time and the Democrats can’t argue against that.

Technorati: David Petraeus, Ray Odierno, Iraq War, Man of the Year, President Bush, Time Magazine, Middle East

Cross-posted at California Conservative