Looking at Iraq in Macro-time

There was similar back-and-forth in Korea: communists nearly driving the United States off the peninsula, then the successful Inchon landing and push to the Yalu River boundary with China, then the Chinese counteroffensive that resulted in a stalemate roughly along the 38th parallel. Each of those developments suggested a very different future trajectory. The one that turned out to be lasting was the maintenance of a non-Communist South Korea that over several decades became first prosperous and then democratic.

That example gave impetus to similar developments in East Asia and even China, which adopted a system of authoritarian government and market economics reminiscent of 1970s South Korea. Harry Truman was regarded as a failed president, with job ratings below George W. Bush's. But the long-term verdict on his Korea policy is much more positive.

An Iraq that is reasonably stable, fairly democratic, more prosperous and productive than the Middle Eastern standard: This seems to be at least one possible trajectory from the success of the surge. That would be a considerable achievement, with positive reverberations for decades to come.

In time, the back-and-forth between victory, then rout, then acceptable but incomplete success that we saw in Korea -- the micro-timeframes that seemed so important at the time -- was mostly forgotten. And the qualified but substantial progress achieved in the macro-timeframe, in Korea and in the dangerous region around it, dominated our view.

We have now some basis to hope that something similar happens in Iraq and the dangerous region around it. We are still far from the "broad, sunlit uplands" that Winston Churchill pointed to in the distance after disaster was narrowly averted at Dunkirk. But we seem to be getting closer.