Running From Petraeus

Congress, without waiting for General Petraeus to send back the progress report it asked him to write when it sent him to Baghdad in January, will launch phase two of the campaign to declare defeat in the Battle of Iraq. The majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and their Democratic Party are maneuvering to set a date for withdrawal of troops even as General Petraeus is preparing for delivery in September two reports that will conclude that it is possible to bring enough security to Iraq for political reconciliation.

What is shaping up may be the most astounding act of perfidy in the history of the Congress. The senate voted 82 to zero to confirm General Petraeus. The Congress underwrote his surge in a bipartisan show of support for a campaign to get control of Baghdad. It put only one basic condition on the expedition, which is that General Petraeus would have to come back in the fall with a thorough report. Our troops are now in the field, fighting heroically in one of the deadliest phases of the Battle to do just what the Congress ratified — and is making real progress.

That turns out to be just what the Democrats are afraid of. One of the things we hear the general is preparing to report concerns the success of the efforts of his officers to turn many of Iraq's sheikhs in Anbar into an anti-terrorist front, with prospects for going national. He will compare the levels of violence in Iraq today to the ghastly reality of Iraq when he arrived. Violent though the battle has been these past few weeks, the level of violence is actually declining — though it's so much lower than, say, the U.S. Civil War or the European wars, or even Iraq's war with Iran, that single car bombs can sharply affect monthly casualty statistics.

One of the things that concerns General Petraeus is the morale and the stamina of his troops in the pincer between the enemy in Iraq and the politicians on the Hill. The general is expected to warn that the army and marines need more incentives, like pay raises, to signal a priority of re-enlisting and volunteering to deploy to the theater. He will also make the case, we hear, for more political support in Washington for what he is doing in Baghdad.

The commander has his work cut out for him with the Democrats. It seems that the Democratic Party, which only a year ago demanded that Mr. Bush listen to his generals, is uninterested in what the general in command of forces in Iraq will have to say. So the next phase of the maneuvering to force a retreat will begin at a hearing on the 2008 Defense Authorization bill. The majority party in Congress will offer a series of amendments aimed at fixing a date to begin a rearward march.

One of these amendments — from Senator Webb, who had a great record in Vietnam and in the Reagan administration but who is now in the anti-war camp — would make it impossible to relieve the GIs on the ground come January and March, by which point most would have to redeploy home. Other amendments, like one offered by Senator Feingold, would fix a date in April for the full retreat.

The Democrats are counting on a growing number of Republicans who, in respect of the war, are now opposing the president from their own party. Senators Domenici and Lugar, of Arizona and Indiana, have in the last two weeks added their voice to the caucus of waverers. It would not be surprising were the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner, to go overboard on Monday.

* * *

The right move for President Bush is to fight this thing all the way through, the way Washington did at Valley Forge, another moment when the summer soldiers were abandoning the fight. He could go into the Valley and address the nation from the spot where it found its courage and won the right to exist. He could talk, as he has so eloquently, about what's at stake in this battle. He could go over the heads of the Democratic Congress and the quailing editorial writers to talk to the nation about the importance of what General Petraeus is getting ready to report to them. And of how the fight is not yet lost and of how we need to keep our troops in the battle, well-supplied and paid, so that a year hence the American people themselves will be in a position to choose between the counsels of defeat and the prospect of victory.