This morning the New York Post ran an editorial describing the flood of Iraqi refugees returning home to a safer Iraq after fleeing earlier violence.  The situation on the ground has improved so much that Retired General Scales, former head of the Army War College, writes that we could be nearing a “culminating point”, a moment when the advantage shifts and the outcome becomes irreversible.  From the editorial:

But research isn't really needed. It's pretty obvious what's going on: The surge - ordered by President Bush and executed by Gen. David Petraeus - is working.

US military casualties have dropped drastically, as have terrorist incidents - down 55 percent since the surge reached full strength. And Iraqi civilian casualties fell 60 percent in that same period.

That translates into a newfound sense of security for Iraqis and Americans alike. Even The New York Times had to admit it in a front-page headline last week: "Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves."

Also in today’s New York Post, Amir Taheri discusses the need to look beyond the black-and-white statistics of violence to other measures of the situation in Iraq.  This provides a balanced look at the positive signs (handover of territory to Iraqi authorities, driving Al Qaeda from Baghdad and other strongholds, increased oil production) with some areas still needing improvement as we move forward.

Iraq today is a hundred times better than what it would have been under Saddam in any imaginable circumstances. Statistics of violence don't begin to measure the efforts of a whole nation to re-emerge from the darkest night in its history. And in that sense, the news from Iraq since April 2003 has always been more good than bad.

In Human Events, Farid Iman and Kamran Beigi offer their suggestions for avoiding a regional war with Iran.  The authors state that when President Bush takes a clear and hard stance against Iran, without strong congressional support, Iranians knows they can placate the situation by reneging in the short term only to resume their dangerous activities a short time later.

Public pressure on the regime to respect and recognize human rights will encourage and embolden the people of Iran to take risks and to challenge the regime.  The international community and the international labor organizations must do all they can to reduce the cost of political activism in Iran for ordinary workers, women and students.  Once the people of Iran feel the firm support of the United States, they may yet be able to take on the regime and remove it from power.