A column in today's USA Today by Michael O'Hanlon criticizes liberals in Washington for failing to see the success in Iraq over the past year, despite a 75% drop in violence and signs of significant political progress.

The Democratic position — embraced particularly by Sen. Barack Obama but also by Sen. Hillary Clinton  — is that we need to make haste for the exits. Obama rigidly calls for pulling nearly all combat forces out of Iraq within about a year of Inauguration Day. Clinton's position leaves room for some flexibility, though her words on the campaign trail are generally similar to Obama's. But neither candidate's approach would be supported by most leaders — American or Iraqi — on the ground in Iraq. Only those who have concluded that the war is already lost tend to back such a position. And that latter viewpoint is far less common today than it was a year ago, or even months ago.

Those who say Iraq will be better off once we leave underestimate the typical duration of most nation-building efforts (a decade or more) as well as the fragility of Iraq's new institutions and the freshness of sectarian wounds that have only begun to heal. The odds are that if we leave soon, we will lose, and Iraq will descend into all-out civil war far worse than what occurred in 2006. This will in turn risk regional turmoil and the likelihood of some al-Qaeda strongholds being re-established in key Iraqi cities.

As the Iraq debate has quieted down over the past few months, it may be easy to forget the dangers of an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region.  Yet, this is exactly the position that Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have chosen - a dangerous and precipitous exit of U.S. troops.