The UK Telegraph has done what Time Magazine should have done if it could have gotten over all that egg on their faces over what has transpired in Iraq this year. The UK magazine recognized General David Petraeus as their Person Of The Year:

Today, we put him in the spotlight again by naming Gen Petraeus as The Sunday Telegraph’s Person of the Year, a new annual accolade to recognise outstanding individual achievement.

He has been the man behind the US troop surge over the past 10 months, the last-ditch effort to end Iraq’s escalating civil war by putting an extra 28,000 American troops on the ground.

So far, it has achieved what many feared was impossible. Sectarian killings are down. Al-Qaeda is on the run. And the two million Iraqis who fled the country are slowly returning. Progress in Iraq is relative – 538 civilians died last month. But compared with the 3,000 peak of December last year, it offers at least a glimmer of hope.

It looks like the Telegraph did what most people in this country agree what should have been done. Putin has been impressive, but Petraeus was impressive on a historic level Putin doesn’t even come close in matching.