Why the surge may not be stopped

Jim VandeHei:

Sens. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) and Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) grabbed all the headlines last month when they called for change in Iraq war strategy. But conversations reveal that many more Republicans privately fear the war is lost -- both politically and on the ground.

This has created a widespread perception that President Bush will be forced to shift plans and begin bringing U.S. troops home in early 2008 after a military progress report is delivered to Congress next month. And that might happen.

Yet there are very good reasons to believe the prevailing conventional wisdom on Iraq might turn out to be wrong once again.

The reasons are simple: the power of the presidency, the anguished feelings of many congressional Republicans and math. In short, Bush is in no mood to yield.

House and Senate Republicans still don't appear prepared to force him to. And a loyal group of GOP senators are prepared to back a Bush veto if Democrats ever succeed in limiting or ending the U.S. mission in Iraq.

"At the end of the day, all of this hand-wringing needs to be understood (in the context) of how Congress works: There will always be 33 of us, as long as there is not a complete meltdown, to support a military strategy that is aggressive and is not based on needs of the next election," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

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In other words, Bush will not adjust the strategy if Petraeus says it is working. And there are growing indications Petraeus will report significant military progress tempered by continued political problems in Iraq, according to Republicans in close contact with Bush.

The clearest sign of Bush's September plan is that the White House has launched a new preemptive campaign to convince lawmakers the surge plan is working.

Significantly, GOP leaders are helping. This started with Bush pulling in GOP lawmakers and then leading conservative columnists last month to argue the war is going better than perceived -- and to spread the word he has no plans to retreat.

It worked: Conservative outlets from the National Review to the Weekly Standard have stepped up their defense of administration policy in Iraq.

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The one thing that barely crosses the mind of the writer is the fact that Bush and the military leadership are right. The story is all about the politics of defeat and not the process of winning the war. It is what is wrong with the Democrat calculations and what is wrong with this kind of reporting. It is the main hope of al Qaeda that the politicians will win for them in Washington what they cannot win in Baghdad and Iraq. War reporting on the Washington front has a different smell and it is the sorry smell of retreat. It is strangely detached from the consequences to the country of such a move and focused only on the political consequences to the members of Congress.