Not to belabor the obvious, but al Qaeda had one hell of a foothold in Anbar and elsewhere until we adopted the new tactics. Ask yourself why the tribes didn't throw al Qaeda off any time during the last couple of years if it was all that easy?

It's because we pushed into these areas, peeled al Qaeda out of the villages with armed force, and protected the Iraqis while they worked up their own defenses and organizations.

I don't know how much al Qaeda would recover if we stopped in the middle of the operation. I see no particular need to find out at this point. Despite drastic reductions in both civilian and military casualties, the war is far from over.

It's not the extra troops making the difference. It's Petraeus' counterinsurgency methods and a different way of doing things. If you wanted to complain that we should have adopted these methods a long time ago, I would have no argument, but it's working now.