No. 2 David Petraeus

Of our top five candidates, Gen. David Petraeus is the only non-politician. And despite rampant speculation, the Commander of the U.S. Central Command so far has adamantly denied any future political ambition. His new job at CENTCOM - he assumed command on Oct. 31 - should keep him busy for sometime anyway.

Perhaps not since Gen. MacArthur's famous Incheon landing has a U.S. military commander done as much to turn the tide of a losing war. Since taking over command of the Iraq theater in January 2007, Petraeus has been instrumental in executing the new strategy dubbed "the Surge." Because of gains made under his watch, the U.S. and Iraq were able to tentatively reach an agreement last week that calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces by 2011.

It's an unthinkable development from just 18 months ago, when the Iraqi security situation reached its nadir and the U.S. was taking triple-digit combat casualties every month. A new Democratic majority in Congress, partly swept into power by the failing Iraq war, wanted to cut American losses and pull out of Iraq entirely, and quickly.

But Petraeus' strategy succeeded - much as MacArthur's 1950 landing saved the young South Korean republic in its infancy. Though there's still sporadic violence, large-scale sectarian strife has been mostly eliminated and the Iraqi al-Qaeda nearly wiped out.

So much so that the Iraq situation was only a marginal campaign issue during the presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain. An early and passionate supporter of "the Surge" strategy, McCain scarcely received credit for his initially unpopular stance. Obama, on the record as being opposed to the war from the very beginning, also has shrewdly and quietly purged his previous opinion that "the Surge" was a failing strategy.

With Iraq's situation under control, Petraeus was promoted to head CENTCOM, specifically tasked to repeat his Iraq success in Afghanistan, where the deposed Taliban regime has reconstituted itself and inflicting heavy casualties on the coalition forces. Should Petraeus calm a dangerous region where military triumph eluded both the British Empire and the Soviet Union in the past centuries, he'll have another crack at our award in 2009.