Bob Krumm traveled to Iraq and wrote an article about his experiences for Pajamas Media. It became quite an interesting article, in which the author explains how the situation in this country changed in just one year time.

The lay-out of the article is quite smart: He starts with citing an old truth (civil war for instance), explains how the situation was one year ago, and explains what it’s like now.

The result is a comprehensive account of what the surge and other changes in tactics did for Iraq.

Some of the changes:

Old Truth: The Iraqi government is dysfunctional and ineffective

The Iraqi parliament had long been under fire for its failure to pass a law authorizing new provincial elections. That law passed last week and elections will now take place by the end of next January. Parliament has also passed a $70 billion budget on time this year. Just this week our own nation was unable to pass its budget before the fiscal year began anew on October 1st, preferring to kick the can down the road for five more months to a new Administration and Congress. While there is still much work remaining to be done in Baghdad — especially new oil legislation — the sad fact is that Iraq’s legislature is no more dysfunctional than our own Congress, which has also failed to act on needed oil legislation. The new reality is that Iraqis of all factions have increasingly turned to ballots, not bullets, to exercise their power.

Old Truth: Neighboring Arabs view the Iraqi government as an American puppet

A National Public Radio report in April highlighted a former U.S. diplomat who said that Arab nations in particular were unwilling to reestablish embassies in Baghdad, not just because of the security situation there, but because they had “considerable doubts about the Maliki government. … They view it as being under very heavy Iranian influence, as being a rather narrow coalition of Shia Iraqi religious parties and the two principal Kurdish parties.” Since this spring, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have all either named or have announced that they will soon name ambassadors to Baghdad. More impressively, Syria and Kuwait, which have not had diplomatic relations with Baghdad since 1984 and 1991 respectively, have also both named ambassadors to Iraq. The new reality is that Iraq’s neighbors increasingly view Iraq as an independent nation led by a legitimate government.

Five and a half years into the war, we are now in the final phase. The next American president will find in Iraq that Americans are doing less and assisting more. Whichever candidate is victorious, he should not let campaign promises constrain him into either reducing American presence too slowly in the face of an improving host nation government and military, or retreating before the Iraqis can gain complete control for themselves. Withdraw either too slow or too fast, and we could still lose a victory that now appears far more likely than it did just six short months ago.

Unlike in Afghanistan, the political leaders of Iraq seem to be gradually changing their country for the better. It took them years, but it seems that are on the right path.