General David Petreaus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker's long-anticipated Congressional testimonies this week were edifying on two levels.

First, they told us a lot about the complex and challenging nature of the war in Iraq today. In their presentations, the two men did not simply inform the Congress of the estimable, indeed amazing progress that coalition and Iraqi forces have made over the past several months since the new counterinsurgency surge strategy was adopted. They also highlighted the enormity of the challenges facing the US and their coalition and Iraqi allies as they look to the future of the country.

The two men did not deliver their remarks in isolation. Their appearances on Capitol Hill came against the backdrop of shrill denunciations of Petreaus specifically and the war in Iraq in general. Those denunciations were orchestrated by deep-pocketed left-wing anti-war activists, and by Democratic politicians who apparently march to the beat of the activists' drummers (and bankrollers).

The Left's preemptive condemnations of Petreaus, and the Democratic politicians' continuation of the Left's attacks inside the committee chambers exposed the troubling direction that American politics have taken in the six years that have passed since legislators from both parties stood shoulder to should outside the Capitol building on September 11, 2001, and sang "God Bless America." And as Petreaus and Crocker's reports on the situation in Iraq today and the prospects for Iraq in the future make clear, the Democratic Party's embrace of radicalism has strategic repercussions for the prospects of the war in Iraq and for the future of global security as a whole.

As Ambassador Crocker explained, after 40 years of Ba'athist tyranny, Iraq emerged in 2003 as a traumatized and fractured society that today is still grappling with basic questions regarding its identity and its aspirations. Its ability to come up with reasonable answers to these existential questions is limited by the war now besetting it. The enemy forces battling in Iraq of course seek through force to provide answers to those basic questions - and their answers obviously will not be good ones for Iraq, for the Middle East or for the world.

Petreaus and Crocker explained that in general, the US and its allies face two distinct enemy forces in Iraq today - al-Qaida in Iraq and Iranian-backed Shi'ite forces. As the stunning reversal of the security situation in the al-Qaida infested Anbar province over the past several months shows, US forces have made great progress against the first enemy.

The US wisely capitalized on tribal leaders' disaffection with al-Qaida barbarism and worked with them to launch an offensive against al-Qaida forces and to bring the Sunni tribes into the political processes in Iraq. As a result of this cooperation, terror and insurgent attacks in Anbar, which as recently as last December was considered "lost," have gone down some 80 percent. Tribal warriors have joined the Iraqi security forces by the thousands. And for its part, the Shi'ite-dominated central government in Iraq has embraced the Sunni reversal and is providing monetary and other assistance to the Sunni leaders in Anbar province.

On the other hand, there has been no decrease, indeed according to Crocker and Petreaus there has been an increase in Iranian-directed attacks in recent months. Characterizing Iran's role Petreaus said, "It is increasingly apparent to both Coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Quds Force, seeks to turn the Iraqi Special Groups [Shi'ite militias] into a Hizbullah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalitions forces in Iraq."

The disparity between al-Qaida's defeats and Iran's Shi'ite countersurge tells us something important about the difference between state-controlled operations and operations by nonstate belligerents. It is true that al-Qaida in Iraq has direct ties to Syria and Iran. Its leaders have ties to Syrian intelligence; its commanders in Iraq are largely directed by al-Qaida's Shura Council in Iran; and it receives arms and funding from Teheran and Damascus.

But still there is a major difference between Iranian and Syrian sponsorship of al-Qaida in Iraq and Iranian support for the Shi'ite militias there. Iran and Syria view al-Qaida as a proxy of convenience. Although its war in Iraq serves their goal of preventing a post-Saddam Iraq from developing into a coherent, multi-ethnic, stable state governed by the rule of law, al-Qaida is not an Iranian (or Syrian) organization. From their perspective, its contribution to the war effort against the US and its Iraqi allies is good for as long as it lasts.

In contrast, Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, the Dawa Party and the Badr Brigades are agents of the Iranian regime, as are Hizbullah and the Iraqi Special Groups.

Petreaus noted that both the US and the Iraqis were surprised by the depth of Iran's involvement in the war. But they needn't have been. Iraq and Iran, with their historic competition for primacy in the Persian Gulf and within Shi'ite Islam, have always been integrally and competitively linked. In the 1980s, recognizing the hostility of both countries to US national security interests, the Reagan administration wisely adopted a policy of dual containment toward them.

Unfortunately, in 2003, the US ignored the interconnectedness of the two countries' fates, and so it adopted divergent policies toward them. While Iraq was confronted, Iran was ignored. Over time, the US policy of neglecting Iran was eventually replaced by a policy of appeasement. This divergence in US policy toward the two countries enabled Iran to renew its traditional bid for control over Iraq just as it was making moves toward regional domination through its nuclear weapons program, its cooptation of the Syrian regime, the expansion of its military and political influence over Lebanon through Hizbullah, and its sponsorship of the Palestinian war against Israel.

Iran's offensive moves in Iraq point to one of the most basic strategic complexities of the entire battle in Iraq. Iraq does not exist in isolation. It is part of the Arab and Islamic worlds. The pathologies plaguing post-Saddam Iraq are not merely the consequence of his brutal totalitarianism. There are also consequences of the pathologies that have taken hold of the Arab and Muslim world since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire 90 years ago. As a result, the American goal of shepherding the development of a democratic, stable post-Saddam Iraq governed by the rule of law, while the rule of the jackboot, the mullah and the imam remain the order of the day in neighboring countries, has always been problematic.

With Petreaus and Crocker's openness in acknowledging Iran's central role in the war in Iraq, we are seeing for the first time an admission that it is counterproductive to view Iraq in isolation from its neighbors. And this acceptance of the regional nature of the war exposes one of the central risks inherent in the US's current counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. Continued...