You heard it here first!

We will surely continue to keep our servicemen in our prayers, particularly over the next few days. God willing, this month will have the lowest number of U.S. casualties since the beginning of the Iraq War. While one death is one too many, as of this writing there have been 19 deaths of American servicemen in December 2007, one less than the previous low of 20 deaths in February 2004. (H/T:icasualties.org)

Of course my highly refined sense of blogger's honor requires that I confess to the misleading nature of this post's title, as there is at least one other blog that broke this information before I did. (Massive H/T: QuickRob) Nevertheless, as sure as the "Big Three" anchors are vacationing in their Aspen ski chalets, you will hear or see nothing about this in the MSM (as they would prefer to detail the woes of homeless veterans and Iraq War PTSD victims.)

In any event, the icasualties data demonstrate in an undeniable fashion that the surge is indeed working. Netroots activists, craven congressional Democrats and the rest of the Left's "axis of nitwits" notwithstanding, President Bush's current strategy in Iraq has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Moreover, as Charles Krauthammer pointed out in a recent column, the surge has created the circumstances that allow for exactly the type of socio-economic progress that Iraq's Maliki government is "too sectarian and paralyzed" to engender by its own means.

Gen. David Petraeus's genius has been to adapt American strategy to capitalize on that development, encouraging the emergence of and allying ourselves with tribal and provincial leaders — without waiting for cosmic national deliverance from the newly constructed and still dysfunctional constitutional apparatus in Baghdad.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is in disarray, the Sunni insurgency in decline, the Shiite militias quiescent, the capital city reviving. Are we now to reverse course and abandon all this because parliament cannot ratify the reconciliation already occurring on the ground?

Do the critics forget their own arguments about the irrelevance of formal political benchmarks? The transfer of power in 2004. The two elections in 2005. The ratification of the constitution. Those were all supposed to be turning points to pacify the country and bring stability — all blown to smithereens by the Samarra bombing in February 2006, which precipitated an orgy of sectarian violence and a descent into civil war.

So, just as we have learned this hard lesson of the disconnect between political benchmarks and real stability, the critics now claim the reverse — that benchmarks are what really count.

So liberals try to have it all three ways, proclaiming and denigrating the importance of political resolution as it suits them, all the while denying the need for regime change in Iraq in the first place - even as they made the case for exactly that prior to the invasion (as discussed elsewhere.)

It is more than fitting that this good news comes to us at Christmastime, when much of the world reflects on a peace that passes all understanding. Perhaps it is more than coincidence that the peace we are beginning to see in Iraq is beyond the comprehension of the anti-war Left.