Last week — just outside Baghdad, at a palace once occupied by Saddam Hussein — Defense Secretary Robert Gates presided over an understated ceremony attended by top Iraqi and American officials. There, General David Petraeus handed over the flag of his command, the Multi-National Force, and said his farewells.

The farewell came almost a year to the date that a full-page ad, sponsored by MoveOn.org, ran in the New York Times insulting General Petraeus as “General Betray Us” and accusing him of “cooking the books for the White House.”

In a Senate hearing that week, Senator Hillary Clinton followed with her own insult, telling the general that his progress report on Iraq required “a willing suspension of disbelief”

— in essence, calling him a liar.

Despite these insults, General David Petraeus held firm in his confidence that the United Sates military could turn around conditions on the ground and win a war in which Democrats had already surrendered.

His faith — in his troops and his cause — never wavered. The surge worked. And a year later the victorious general is coming home.

Now, friends, there will be no ticker-tape parades down New York’s Canyon of Heroes for General David Petraeus when he returns to American soil — but there ought to be.

There will also be no apologies from those who disparaged this American giant; there won’t even be a simple “thank you.”

But history will mark his place…

and also mark the shameful place of those who really betrayed us.