Ralph Peters continues his dispatches from street-level Iraq in the NY Post, with this one from Fallujah.

The extremists and insurgents believed they could wear America down. But between 2004 and 2007, two things happened: We wore them down – and al Qaeda wore them out.

With foreign fanatics butchering the innocent and enforcing prison-yard “Islamic laws” that far exceeded the Koran’s demands, it belatedly dawned on the insurgents that, while we intended to leave eventually – on our own terms – al Qaeda meant to stay.

A wave of suicide bombings earlier this year, culminating in a massive attack on a funeral procession, made the population snap. The people of Fallujah may never love us, but they hate al Qaeda with the rage of a betrayed lover.

Since May, the change has been stunning. When the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines were last in Fallujah, in 2006, they took casualties from snipers and roadside bombs. The city was violent, bankrupt and partly in ruins.

Now the battalion’s back. And welcome. Marines banter with the locals where, six months ago, it was risky to ride in an armored vehicle.

Paradoxically, the violence of the past set the only possible conditions for the sudden reconciliation. The Iraqis had to grasp that we meant business. Now the 1st Platoon of the battalion’s Fox Company lives and works in the Hadari Precinct with the Iraqi police.

Michael Yon has been delivering detailed reports from the ground in Iraq for a long time now, and has a new one today.

Over the past several years, while working into a strategic fatigue, our military has made an amazing transformation in how it conducts this war. Gone, for instance, are heavy-handed tactics, replaced by multi-dimensional counterinsurgency strategy rolled out simultaneously with targeted kinetic battles, like those recently with the 3/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Baqubah.

Arrowhead Ripper was merely the latest experience that underlines the Army’s rapidly-growing expertise. Yet the Marines have adapted faster and seem poised to win the war in their battle space. In fact, it’s been Army officers who have told me repeatedly over the past several years that nobody is successfully morphing to meet this war faster than the Marines. Of course, Army officers who compliment Marines always say, “But that didn’t come from me.”

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