From MSNBC last Thursday, some fantastic news out of Iraq:

The United States formally transferred control of the Green Zone to Iraqi authorities Thursday in a pair of ceremonies that also handed back Saddam Hussein’s former palace. Iraq’s prime minister said he will propose making Jan. 1 a holiday marking the restoration of sovereignty.

…the Iraqi government also now has control of American troops’ actions and of the country’s airspace.

The moves came amid a dramatic fall in violence over the past year.

This is huge for several reasons. The Green Zone, as you probably know and as noted in the article, is Iraq’s government and military command center. It is also located in the heart of Baghdad, where the worst of the fighting has been during this war. That the Americans are now handing it over to the Iraqis is huge in terms of both the decreased level of violence it signifies and of the symbolism to the Iraqi people of gaining control back of their own country.

In fact, despite the media and many politician’s claims that there was never an exit strategy from Iraq, the exit strategy has always been clear to those who paid attention: to train up the new Iraqi security forces and hand the country back to them, province by province, as they were able to take control of it.

This process began back in July 2006. There are 18 provinces in Iraq, and the first one to be handed over to the Iraqi forces was Muthanna in the southern part of the country. Two more provinces were handed over in September and December of that year, bringing the total to 3 out of 18 provinces controlled by Iraqi forces.

In 2007, six more provinces were handed over to Iraqi security forces, making the total 9 out of 18. And last year in 2008, four more provinces were transferred to Iraqi control — including the westernmost and largest province in the country, Al Anbar… the province where the worst and most violent fighting of the war occurred and the province many pundits and politicians said was completely lost and simply unwinnable. The American military proved more than up to the task.

So here is the progress we’ve made over the past four years, with the provinces controlled by coalition forces in red and the ones handed over to Iraqi forces in green:

December 2005:

December 2006:

December 2007:

December 2008:

Now that’s some progress we can believe in. My guess is if more Americans had seen maps like those, support for the war would be a lot higher than it currently is. We are steadily moving forward toward and achieving our goals in Iraq. Our exit strategy is to make the remaining five provinces on that map green. Baghdad is the worst out of those five, and what happened on January 1, 2009 when we handed over the Green Zone and Saddam’s palace was the first steps toward giving them back Baghdad.

This is remarkable, considering so many politicians, including the Democrats’ Senate Majority Leader, once declared this war “lost”.

And it is a huge psychological shot in the arm for the Iraqis, because the American control of the Green Zone and Saddam’s former palace was “the most potent symbol of the U.S. invasion and occupation.” Iraqis (and cynical Americans) can now begin believing that we don’t have any hidden agenda of occupying Iraq for the foreseeable future. This is why the Prime Minister wants to declare January 1 a national holiday known as “Sovereignty Day” for years to come.

With all this good news, the problem is this: we’ve only got five provinces to go, and we are making steady progress toward our goal — but despite this we now have a U.S. government led at every branch by Democrats who want to “redeploy” our troops out of Iraq. The concern should be readily apparent: we have five provinces in the middle of the country where the Iraqis are not well-enough trained or equipped to handle the insurgency or the terrorists behind it. If we withdraw before we have time to finish a proper and orderly transfer, we risk those five provinces being overrun by the insurgents and terrorists and becoming a base for terrorism across the rest of the country and region.

We’ve already handed over 13 provinces and the Green Zone and Saddam’s palace in the heart of Baghdad Province and all Iraqi airspace. My question is this: why can’t we give our troops the time needed to continue with this so-far successful mission in the remaining 4 1/2 provinces? Has this mission taken longer than anyone originally thought? Absolutely. Does that mean it’s not working, or we’re not winning? Absolutely not. The facts speak loudly to the contrary. Now, we must allow our soldiers to do what they do best and finish the job properly.