It has been three days since President Obama's speech on Iraq and two days since GEN Austin replaced GEN Odierno and Operation New Dawn replaced Operation Iraqi Freedom. Everything seems largely unchanged yet...somehow different.

The pundits came out in full force to weigh in on these events and articulated some interesting opinions, for whatever they might be worth.

The President seemed to get it about right. The military did everything asked of them and, I think, a great deal more. After the wheels fell off the bus that got us here, military commanders throughout Iraq found themselves refereeing a very nasty civil war while simultaneously trying to sort out and kill the truly bad guys and effectively run the entire country.

It took several years and several thousand American lives, but slowly the landscape changed, the level of violence dropped precipitously, and Iraqis set about trying to restore some sense of normalcy to their lives. The Iraq security forces, both Army and police, grew steadily both in numbers and in capability. The combined efforts of the Iraqi and US forces relentlessly pursued the bad guys, disrupting their networks, choking off their funding, and capturing or killing most of their leadership.

All of that gets us to where we are today. A weird mix of violence and hope in a country groping, almost blindly, for a future it knows exists but can't quite see. A country that 10 years ago had only two allowable TV stations to watch and now is a sea of satellite dishes. A country whose pre-war citizens possessed just a few thousand of the cell phones that are now ubiquitous. A country boasting 40% more available electricity then during the Saddam era, supplying only one half of what the demand has grown to be as air conditioners and refrigerators continue to appear.

A country whose local markets are filled with carts of available goods, but where, in any city on any given day, one of those carts might explode and kill dozens. This place is a work in progress.

It is time to give the country back to its citizens, to put more pressure on its elected officials to form the government and start taking care of the people. Massive obstacles remain and, as many close to the problem have articulated, the outcome remains in doubt. History, as always, will judg the wisdom of the endeavor and the efficacy of the toil.

Now, however, the wheels are back on the bus and it's time for someone else to drive.