From an Iraqi member of the New York Times’ Baghdad bureau:

During my travel from Syria to Baghdad I was completely relaxed. There were no worries, no fear of looters and terrorists with Al Qaeda, or Ansar al-Sunna (Protectors of the Sunni), Jaish al-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed) who used to control everything on the expressway between Syria and Baghdad.

Then when we stopped to get some rest near a big restaurant called Bilaad ash-Sham I saw many Iraqi and Syrian buses filled with travelers, and many four-wheel-drive vehicles.

They told me that everything was going fine and that stories that I had heard about the security situation in some Baghdad districts were right.

I reached Baghdad at 6 a.m. The driver dropped me in the Mansour district. My mother was waiting for me there. Sometimes when I was calling her I could not keep back my tears. She always makes me feel like a young child, which is something I like. It covers me with kindness and warmth. She can read my thoughts and feels what’s inside me.

I put my luggage inside my mother’s car and we drove to my neighborhood. While driving I was amazed to see what I had heard about: the huge difference in security, which was much better than when I left.

My mother said: “Drive normally and just slow down when you are near a checkpoint.”

It was a really strange feeling to see my neighborhood again. In some ways it was the same, in others different. The main road had become ugly because there are now many damaged buildings and shops, and I noticed the marks of bullets and shrapnel everywhere around.

His conclusion:

Will it stay safe or not?

I guess that all depends on the American troops, since we will not have qualified Iraqi forces soon. Although most Iraqi forces are sincere you find some have been infiltrated by groups of gunmen and sectarian people who made the mess all around us.

So we still need the Americans because if they intend to leave, there will be something like a hurricane which will extract everything - people, buildings and even trees. Everything that has happened and all that safety will be past, just like a sweet dream.

As people say in my neighborhood: “The Americans are now Ansar al Sunna.” Protectors of the Sunni.

The liberals tell us that the invasion of Iraq has diminished America’s standing in the world.  That may or may not be true, but what would abandoning the mission in Iraq and leaving the Iraqi people we pledged to help vulnerable to the machinations of the various state and terrorist factions do to our standing in the world?

The decision to invade Iraq is water under the bridge now five years on, yet the left insists on continuing to fight that battle.  What they need to recognize is that it’s over, and what we need to decide is where to go from here.

And I think there is only one honorable answer to that question.