So we are going to have the remainder of the “surge” soldiers in place by the first or June requiring considerable sacrifice by our brave young men and women. And what is the new government and Parliment of Iraq doing? They are taking the months of July and August off, it’s vacation time. Do we honestly think that the Iraqi government wants to govern let alone take over the security of their own country?

President Bush and Vice President Cheney cannot make the case that their Iraq policies have succeeded, so they are doing one thing they do very well: taking a serious argument over the future of American foreign policy and turning it into a petty partisan squabble.

This is not really an argument over the “surge” of troops into Iraq. It is a fight over whether we want to make an open-ended commitment to keeping combat forces in Iraq for many years or whether we anticipate pulling most of them out within a year or two.

Even if the surge succeeds in a narrow sense — by reducing the number of Iraqis killed in sectarian violence in Baghdad — there is no guarantee that the overall situation in Iraq will be any better, no guarantee that Iraqi leaders will take the political steps necessary to end the internecine killing and create a stable government, no guarantee that we will make progress against al-Qaeda.