Observers on all sides of the conflict in Iraq can agree that it is difficult to judge the real course of competing fortunes there. The believability of the U.S. military has been damaged by the public relations blitz of Pentagon spokesmen and kindred spirits in the conservative think tanks. Many of the war’s current advocates were among those who predicted five years ago that invading American soldiers would be greeted like arriving tourists in Oahu.

In one of the most horrible military blunders in American history, the United States administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, disbanded the Iraqi army and police in 2003; 400,000 heavily armed men were informed that they were unemployed, without visible means of support; and were released into society armed to the teeth with sophisticated weapons and munitions. Mr. Bremer should have recognized that they were unlikely to regroup into target-shooting, paint-ball, or quail-hunting clubs.

The resulting chaos was predictable. But the steady strengthening of the new Iraqi government’s forces, the insertion of an additional 30,000 U.S. soldiers in the surge, more aggressive rules of engagement, and a comprehensive strategy of working with local factions, has reduced violence by more than 70%, and U.S. casualties by almost 90%.

The logical next step was to reduce the militias that were not subordinate to the government, especially the Mahdi Army of Moktada Al-Sadr in control of Basra, Iraq’s second city and principal oil export point.

Mr. Sadr, who has publicly conceded his failure to maintain his influence, put up a spirited resistance in Basra, but sued for peace after a couple of days. His attempt to unleash general violence in Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Nasariya, and other cities, was a fiasco, put down quickly by the Iraqi Security Forces, with almost no assistance from the U.S.

The Democratic presidential candidates and the leftist press in the U.S. and elsewhere, having long mocked the failure to deal with the militias, excitedly claimed that the Iraqi government had suffered a debacle. There were shrieks of joy and triumph in the New York Times, the BBC, and like-minded press, and the Clinton and Obama camps declared the revival of the war as a major campaign issue, briefly. Republican nominee-designate John McCain dryly commented that the winning side is not usually the one that asks for a cease-fire.

In the weeks since the entry into Basra, it has emerged that the city has been completely cleared and brought under government control, and that the insurgents’ ability to siphon off up to half a million barrels of oil a day, and devote the proceeds of their sale to promote terrorist activity, has ended.

The Sunni and Kurdish minorities have been uplifted by the sight of the largely Shiite Iraqi government suppressing the principal Shiite paramilitary group.

There was much mirth in the anti-Bush press that, in the Basra action, 1,000 Iraqi soldiers deserted (of a force of 30,000, more than three times the 2007 congressionally mandated benchmark target for combat-worthy Iraqi troops). The thousand were court-martialed, but this was a respectable overall performance by a new army, fighting against fellow-Shiites in the country’s second city, in a hastily improvised operation.

Except for the continuing violence in Sadr City (Baghdad), the Iraqi government has now asserted itself almost throughout the country. This is an immense step forward from the pre-Surge chaos in much of Iraq, when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were calling for almost instant departure by boat, plane, and bus, and the chairman of the foreign relations committee, Senator Biden, was glibly proposing partition of the country. Mr. Sadr is now a whining refugee and ward of the lunatic regime in Iran. And Iraq is now by far America’s most useful anti-terrorist ally.

The original threat to western security in the Middle East arose when Jimmy Carter (who spent last week hob-nobbing with the Hamas military leadership), helped throw the Shah out of Iraq like a dead mouse. The Iranian revolution and the aggressions of Saddam delivered the two principal countries of the Persian Gulf into the hands of enemies of the West. This left Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the oil-producing Emirates, quaking in their sandals.

Though not an Arab country, Iran took up the sponsorship of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad and challenged the position of Egypt and Saudi Arabia as the leading champions of aroused Islam even in the Arab world. This is why both those governments effectively applauded Israel in its (bungled) assault upon Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006. The dangers posed by the region have been aggravated by the steady increase in U.S. dependence on foreign oil over the last 35 years.

In removing Saddam and seeking to install a legitimate and comparatively civilized government in Iraq, the United States was upholding international law as well as its own and the West’s legitimate strategic interests. Saddam had defied 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions; had violated the Gulf War cease-fire agreement; had widely promoted terrorism; and had previously tried to develop and deploy weapons of mass destruction. He was an evil and barbarous dictator, even by Middle Eastern standards.

The shambles of the first four years of the occupation squandered American believability and made the U.S. appear, for a time, in Richard Nixon’s phrase, like “a pitiful helpless giant,” mired in the quagmire of Araby. Obviously, George W. Bush should not have become so messianic about his naive fantasy of benignly contagious democracy. He stuck too long with Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, and should not have promoted General Casey, whose Iraq strategy failed, to army chief of staff, where he publicly harasses his more successful replacement, General Petraeus.

Declared American ends in Iraq, however, were commendable. Failure would convulse the Middle East, embolden terrorists, and create a dangerous vacuum where Great Powers normally reside. Every sensible interest would be served by allied success in Iraq. The Democratic presidential contenders are adjusting late and slowly to the revival of the prospects and respectability of their country’s fortunes in the Middle East.

Conrad Black is the author of “Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom” and “Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.” From the National Post.