Rethinking the surge

There is a sense of accelerating momentum in the US towards a post-surge rethink of Iraq policy. The Bush administration had been hoping that it could be postponed until September when General David Petraeus, the coalition commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, are due in Washington to present a progress report.

Even that was being played down by the White House, which was commissioning other studies in case the report was too embarrassing, as the administration did in the case of the Iraq Study Group.

But all the signs are that events on the ground in Iraq and the political clock in Washington are running ahead of the administration's timetable. The trickle of Republican defections threatens to become a rush for the door as the party gets nervous about its electoral viability next year. The latest defector, Pete Domenici, a New Mexico senator, had been a reliable all-weather supporter. The fact that he blamed the failure of the surge on the Iraqi government hardly mitigates the significance of his change of heart.

According to an article in this morning's New York Times by David Sanger (widely considered the best reporter on the White House beat) there are fears in the White House that the exodus may accelerate, particularly if John McCain, the most vocal surge advocate outside the White House, returns from a fact-finding trip to Iraq with more bad news. The rethink of what to do after the surge has gained urgency, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates, has cancelled a Latin American tour, so that he can take part.

The New York Times has also waded in to the debate editorially with a lengthy polemic entitled "The road home" calling for an immediate start to the withdrawal. All the reasons for staying on have evaporated, it argues, adding: "The war is sapping the strength of the nation's alliances and military forces."

There has been little doubt for months that the surge had failed to bring the sectarian conflict under control and to bolster the Iraq government. What is at issue now is how long the administration will attempt to put off a course correction, while patience runs out in the Republican party.

The new course is likely to involve some kind of redeployment away from the most dangerous tasks, like patrolling Baghdad, to heavily fortified super-bases, either in Iraq or in the region, from where the US could strike if, for example, al-Qaida showed further signs of establishing itself. That was one of the central policy recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, along with opening channels of communication with Tehran and Damascus. The surge increasingly looks like a detour on the way to implementing those proposals.

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