In today’s Opinion Journal Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki writes for patience with Iraq’s progress. In many ways this is exactly what we all been saying all along.

Think about it. It’s been a scant four years since the invasion and overthrow of Saddam. Yes we’ve lost 3500 troops, but that is in itself an amazingly small number considering the size of the conflict when compared to other conflicts. Still instead of throwing away the sacrifice of our men and women – as the left wants to do – Maliki asks to look at the whole of the picture.

“War being what it is, the images of Iraq that come America’s way are of car bombs and daily explosions. Missing from the coverage are the great, subtle changes our country is undergoing, the birth of new national ideas and values which will in the end impose themselves despite the death and destruction that the terrorists have been hell-bent on inflicting on us. Those who endured the brutality of the former regime, those who saw the outside world avert its gaze from their troubles, know the magnitude of the change that has come to Iraq. A fundamental struggle is being fought on Iraqi soil between those who believe that Iraqis, after a long nightmare, can retrieve their dignity and freedom, and others who think that oppression is the order of things and that Iraqis are doomed to a political culture of terror, prisons and mass graves. Some of our neighbors have made this struggle more lethal still, they have placed their bets on the forces of terror in pursuit of their own interests.”

Of course Maliki is referring to Iran support of the insurgency in that last sentence. We have only recently discovered how deep Iran’s involvement has been, although I believe they have been involved pretty much since the beginning.

The fact is that Iraq will take years to develop and prosper. Still as he points out there has been in spite of the media’s insistance of only showing the bad, the fact is that there has been a hugh amount of progress in a short period of time.

Yet according the Traitor Times Iraqi’s are failing to meet benchmarks which will again fuel the democrat’s call for cut and run. Again, just four years has past and yet we expect faster progress than we have in any other conflict in history.

Iraq will need our presence for a long time to come. The question is whether or not we have to guts to stick it out or to leave Iraq in ruins.