Is The Iraq War Over?

I started a post on this the other day and couldn't find the words to explain. Today, reading a summary of the war from Strategy Page, provides a jumping off point for discussion, if not an answer.

An accurate summary of how the war began:

Iraq, and most of the countries in the Middle East, are broken. They have been for a long time. We in the West have generally ignored it, because there were no workable solutions that were easily available. Then came the latest wave of Islamic terrorism. This got worse, until September 11, 2001, and then the prospect of mass murder in our own backyard became a reality. But at that point, the West became divided over the solution. Do we keep treating the terrorists as a police problem, and wait them out? That is known to work. But the threat of even deadlier terrorist attacks made more dramatic moves attractive to many, especially in the United States. That resulted in Iraq, confronting the Arab problems up close and personal. It ain't pretty. But unless the Arab problems are solved, the ugly aftereffects will still be there, and so will the threat of mass murder on the street where you live. The war on terror, and the war in Iraq, are all part of a struggle within Islam. Do we keep on with the same pattern of rebellion and repression, or do we try developing a civil society. Until the Iraqis decided what kind of country they wanted to live in, the war went on.

Afterwards, Iraq was plagued by the insurgency, which can be broadly defined as an alliance between Sunni Iraqis and Al Queda against the Shiia dominated government and America. On the periphery were the Independent Kurdish north and the Shiia radicals allied with Iran (and the Shiaa radicals not allied with Iran and all sorts of other subsets).

But broadly speaking, it was the Sunni Iraqis and Al Queda fighting the Malaki government. Since the Anbar Awakening, the majority of Sunni Iraqis have not only abandoned Al Queda, but are fighting them.

Thus, while tensions still run high in Iraq between Sunnis, Shiia, and Kurdish Iraqis, the insurgency, as previously defined, no longer exists...and as a point of fact, has been defeated.