No surge in Washington

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, says he needs more time to tell whether President Bush's "surge" strategy will work to improve the situation in Iraq. What is already clear, however, is that it has already failed in Washington.

If President Bush wants an open-ended scheduled for the involvement of U.S. troops in Iraq, then he needs to come up with a credible explanation on how this is going to improve the situation there. Just saying that if we don't fight terrorists in Iraq we will find ourselves fighting them here is not enough. Part of the burden of taking a democratic country to war is that the President must take upon himself the responsibility to maintain the support of the public.

Given the history of how the United States got involved in Iraq, and given the various statements by the administration about progress in the war that were later shown by events to have been overly optimistic, President Bush cannot expect Congress to give him the open-ended commitment that he seeks. Not under the current conditions.