In his column for the New York Times, Democrat Thomas Friedman attempts to give Obama and Democrats credit for any success in Iraq.

In the last year, though, the U.S. troop surge and the backlash from moderate Iraqi Sunnis against Al Qaeda and Iraqi Shiites against pro-Iranian extremists have brought a new measure of stability to Iraq. There is now, for the first time, a chance — still only a chance — that a reasonably stable democratizing government, though no doubt corrupt in places, can take root in the Iraqi political space.

That is the Iraq that Obama is inheriting. It is an Iraq where we have to begin drawing down our troops — because the occupation has gone on too long and because we have now committed to do so by treaty — but it is also an Iraq that has the potential to eventually tilt the Arab-Muslim world in a different direction.

I’m sure that Obama, whatever he said during the campaign, will play this smart. He has to avoid giving Iraqi leaders the feeling that Bush did — that he’ll wait forever for them to sort out their politics — while also not suggesting that he is leaving tomorrow, so they all start stockpiling weapons.

If he can pull this off, and help that decent Iraq take root, Obama and the Democrats could not only end the Iraq war but salvage something positive from it. Nothing would do more to enhance the Democratic Party’s national security credentials than that.

I said this is what would happen and now we’re seeing it in real time. The war in Iraq was a success and we’ve been drawing down troops for a while. Democrats won’t admit as much until Obama is in office, at which point he’ll be credited for the stability and progress. The media, ever willing to set a pro-Obama narrative, will go right along with it.

It won’t matter that Democrats, including Obama himself, fought the continuation of the war and the implementation of the surge at every step. It won’t matter that they voted to cut off funding to our troops. It won’t matter that their Senate Majority Leader declared the war “lost” long ago. It won’t matter that Democrats did everything possible to lose the war.

They’ll still claim that they deserve credit for the success.

Bob Owens writes:

How many times in the past two years have Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and their cohorts attempted to defund our troops and force them into defeat? Forty times? Fifty? Frankly, I lost count somewhere in the mid-forties.

Now Friedman and his fellow defeatists on the left who long derided those of us who wanted to secure victory as “28-percenters,” “warmongers” and “murderers” want to try to rewrite history. The Times and their fellow travelers long to rewrite their moral cowardice as a virtue, and give themselves a victory by declaration.

And who can forget the New York Times’ 61% discount for MoveOn.org’s full-page ad declaring General David Petraeus, the very leader of troops in Iraq at the time, a traitor?