We Won! So Let’s Go Home

The WaPo is reporting that the U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating blows to Al Qaeda in Iraq, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group.

The Bush administration, of course, began describing AQI as the chief bogeyman after other stay-the-course rationales sunk under their own weight, including the bald-faced lie that it was these insurgents who launched the 9/11 terror attacks.

But while AQI has indeed been dealt a number of crippling blows since the Surge began, it represents but a small fraction of the insurgency and WaPo writers Thomas E. Ricks and Karen De Young note that there are risks in declaring victory:

* AQI has been resilient in the past and could rise again.

* It would acknowledge the obvious – that the war has become a civil war that the U.S. has no business being involved in.

And then there is my favorite:

Nature abhors a vacuum and, if AQI has indeed been dealt a fatal blow, it will only be a matter of time before others step in to fill the void.