Michael Yon has a must-read piece in today's Journal. He makes a lot of interesting observations based on the unprecedented amount of time he's spent in Iraq reporting on the war, but I think most important is this:

Soldiers everywhere are paid, and good generals know it is dangerous to mess with a soldier's money. The shoeless heroes who froze at Valley Forge were paid, and when their pay did not come they threatened to leave – and some did. Soldiers have families and will not fight for a nation that allows their families to starve. But to say that the tribes who fight with us are "rented" is perhaps as vile a slander as to say that George Washington's men would have left him if the British offered a better deal.

The left has long ridiculed the members of the Anbar Awakening as mere mercenaries, fighting for the insurgency and al Qaeda first before being offered better pay by the U.S. military. Yon doesn't see it that way. In fact, he says that "powerful tribes in Anbar province cooperate with us now because they came to see al Qaeda for what it is--and to see Americans for what we truly are."

It's definitely worth reading the whole thing. Even soldiers who've been in Iraq for a full 15-month tour are unlikely to have the perspective that Yon does if only because Yon is able to cover the whole country. If he says there has been a dramatic turnaround...it's hard to argue with it. And of course, buy the book, Moment of Truth.