Hope and success is breaking out everywhere these days – I can’t keep up with the stories! So here are some hopeful readings for war-weary Americans who can see the light of victory at the end of the tunnel.

First off is this article from a CSM reporter who is back in Iraq after a year and sees numerous signs of success, large and small:

For a reporter last here a year ago, during perhaps the deepest of Iraq’s despair, there is a palpable change: visible in such mundane things as sidewalk rebuilding projects and people lingering outside a favorite ice-cream shop, audible in the tone of families returning to neighborhoods they’d fled in fear.

Iraq is a different place now: The grip of horrendous daily violence has loosened; the government is showing some signs of being one. And Iraqis – once among the best educated, best fed, and most widely traveled people in the region, practitioners of a river- and desert-fashioned joy of living – dare to hope.

And here is an article from ABC News which pepper its reporting with a one-word conclusion: “success”.

In Baghdad’s Sadr City today, once again, street vendors line the sidewalk with colorful shirts and shoes. Vegetable markets, once again, have fresh limes and produce. Family stores, once again, are back in business.

…

The residents of Sadr City have been longtime followers of the firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr and his 60,000-strong Mahdi militia. He and his fighters staunchly oppose the U.S. military presence in Iraq and have frequently targeted U.S. troops across the country.

But all that has changed. Last week, al Sadr’s representatives and the main Shiite political party here signed a cease-fire agreement.

And at sunrise on May 20, a legion of Iraqi soldiers cautiously marched into Sadr City. Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki had ordered the thousands of soldiers into the Shiite enclave as part of “Operation Peace.” They were greeted with open arms.

…

The soldiers were heralded as heroes. And Maliki was seen as the strong leader he’s frequently failed to be in the past — taking on the unpredictable Sadr and his Mahdi army.

Here is a NY Times article on the huge success our Marines are having in Afghanistan:

For two years British troops staked out a presence in this small district center in southern Afghanistan and fended off attacks from the Taliban. The constant firefights left it a ghost town, its bazaar broken and empty but for one baker, its houses and orchards reduced to rubble and weeds.

But it took the Marines, specifically the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, about 96 hours to clear out the Taliban in a fierce battle in the past month and push them back about 6 miles.

…

The whole area was unexpectedly welcoming to the American forces and eager for security and development, Captain Moder said. “Us pushing the Taliban out allows the Afghan National Army to come in,” he said. “This is a real breadbasket here. There’s a lot of potential here.”

What is interesting in this article is how it notes foreign fighters from all over the ME, including Iran:

The Taliban, who kicked out villagers and took over their farmhouses, were also mixed with an unusual proportion of Arabs and Pakistanis, Major Den-McKay said.

“The majority of elements in this area are Arab and Pakistani, and the locals detest them,” he said. The insurgent commanders were from Iran, which shares a border with Afghanistan to the southwest, as well as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, he said.

Afghan villagers confirmed that there were local Afghan Taliban fighting, too. But they also said that there were Pakistanis, ethnic Baluchis from southern Iran and Arabs fighting as well.

We are succeeding in this war, so much so the SurrenderMedia has had to report the opposite of all their dire predictions and warnings they produced for the last few years. Impatience is never a good reason to surrender to an enemy. Victory comes with perseverance and determination and ingenuity, something our fighting forces have an abundance of.

One thing to note is how the Islamo Fascists use the SurrenderMedia to their own means, to try and undo the damage their own muslim-on-muslim violence has done to their support and credibility:

The Taliban are preparing to launch a propaganda offensive with greater (global) outreach by arming some of its members with requisite skills to upload videos on websites such as YouTube.

“The real war is the media war,” Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud told Daily Times. “It is our desire to learn also how one should fight the media war.”

Mehsud paved the way for a media counter-offensive on Friday by inviting more than 30 journalists from national and international media organisations to North and South Waziristan.

The liberal media is now openly showing the world that they are willing puppets of terrorists, aiding and abetting the jackbooted thugs in covering up for the atrocities they have committed on their fellow human beings. How any respectable journalist could or would give voice to these despots is beyond me – but they do. All the while kidding themselves into thinking they are doing God’s work for mankind. As I have said many times – pathetic.