In his column in today's Washington Post, Jackson Diehl discusses America's way forward in Iraq and the battle in Washington regarding troop levels needed to maintain the successes of 2007.

...for once, saying that the next six to 12 months will win or lose the war just might be right.
        
That's not because Iraqis have suddenly developed the capacity to meet the unrealistic timelines drawn up in Washington ever since 2003 -- when the Pentagon planned to reduce U.S. troops to a skeleton force of 30,000 within six months of the capture of Baghdad. On the contrary, Petraeus and Crocker have spent the past year attempting to drive home the point that the U.S. goal of a stable, democratizing Iraq, if it can be achieved at all, will require an American commitment well beyond any of the timetables discussed in Washington -- despite the remarkable success of this year's military surge.
        
So the next six to 12 months are not crucial because of what will happen in Iraq -- where, at best, violence will continue to decline incrementally, while Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds make painful and partial progress toward political settlements. The test will come in the United States -- where first the Pentagon and the White House, and then the country, will decide whether to invest enough resources in Iraq to keep the hope of eventual success alive.

In a telephone interview last week, Ambassador Crocker, America's diplomatic point person in Iraq, may have said it best: 

"At the most fundamental level there is a view [in Iraq] that things are moving in the right direction; that security is improving; that the surge has worked; that Iraqi forces are more numerous and more capable; and that therefore why on earth would we abandon a winning proposition?"

To read more about the situation on the ground in Iraq, click here to read General Petraeus' year-end letter to the troops.  In this letter, Petraus offers a frank and honest assessment of where we are, and some thoughts on the past year and how to proceed.