The Associated Press seems to be declaring victory in Iraq.

This is an epochal moment.

While scattered attacks will continue, two veteran AP correspondents–one of whom, Robert H. Reid, has covered the war from Baghdad since 2003–believe that the tide has turned, based on extensive interviews with American and Iraqi commanders throughout Iraq. The AP lays out the evidence:
But the underlying dynamics in Iraqi society that blew up the U.S. military’s hopes for an early exit, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, have changed in important ways in recent months.

Systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital, in large part because of tight security and a strategy of walling off neighborhoods purged of minorities in 2006.

That has helped establish a sense of normalcy in the streets of the capital. People are expressing a new confidence in their own security forces, which in turn are exhibiting a newfound assertiveness with the insurgency largely in retreat.

Statistics show violence at a four-year low. The monthly American death toll appears to be at its lowest of the war — four killed in action so far this month as of Friday, compared with 66 in July a year ago. From a daily average of 160 insurgent attacks in July 2007, the average has plummeted to about two dozen a day this month. On Wednesday the nationwide total was 13.

Beyond that, there is something in the air in Iraq this summer.

In Baghdad, parks are filled every weekend with families playing and picnicking with their children. That was unthinkable only a year ago, when the first, barely visible signs of a turnaround emerged.

Obviously, much work lies ahead and U.S. forces may well be in Iraq, in some capacity, for years.

As a side note: The number of American combat deaths does not indicate that our nation is winning or losing. Victorious advances usually come with increased military deaths and retreats often mean fewer deaths. In this case, the low number of deaths is simply a proxy measuring the enemy’s ability to carry out attacks against our forces. In this case, good news.

Inevitably, some will begin to analyze this in terms of the presidential campaign. Will it hurt Obama, because it is more evidence that he was wrong about the surge, or help him, because it means that the public can turn the page on Iraq and focus on domestic issues (his strength)? I will let others worry about that question.

For now, we must not miss the two important points: As bad as media bias seems to many conservatives, it is good news that the press finally does cautiously report what it sees and hears. Doesn’t this suggest that the press was also telling the truth in the dark days of the war? In any event, the AP, the wire service that the blogosphere lives to poke, is not living in an anti-war version of Plato’s Cave. The AP’s reporting changed as the war did.

And, the biggest point: More than four thousand Americans wearing out nation’s uniform did not die in vain. They helped America achieve a vital turning point in Iraq. Force can sometimes do what diplomacy cannot. If we are lucky, Iraq’s democracy will survive and begin a transformation of the region.

Let’s hope their surviving comrades live to see a free Iraq and are not left with the cold comfort of that Vietnam-era bumpersticker: “We were winning when I left.”