Follow up on surge success

The now-undeniable success of the U.S. troop surge presents a conundrum. It demonstrates that the military segment of the war in Iraq can indeed be won. But as Gen. David Petraeus, the brilliant commander who devised the winning strategy has said repeatedly, the wider war to stabilize Iraq requires a political solution.

Gen. Petraeus has provided what the president asked of him: a reduction in violence to give Iraq's central government breathing space to achieve reconciliation and lay the groundwork for a stable democracy. The numbers that tell the story of the success of our heroic troops and their inspiring commander are set out in Paul Greenberg's column on our Commentary page.

Brookings Institution military analyst Michael O'Hanlon observes that the surge has outdone the most optimistic expectations. He told The New York Times, "These trends are stunning in military terms and beyond the predictions of most proponents of the surge last winter." But he wisely warned, "Nobody knows if the trends are durable in the absence of national reconciliation and in the face of major U.S. troop drawdowns in 2008."

The opportunity provided by the lull in violence, secured at great cost in lives of American and Iraqi soldiers, is threatened both in Washington and Baghdad. At precisely the moment when the momentum of the surge must be maintained, politicking by the Democratic leadership, which seeks to impose an arbitrary time line for troop withdrawals, threatens funding for the war.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered the Army to begin planning for a series of expected cutbacks, including the layoffs of as many as 100,000 civilian employees and another 100,000 civilian contractors, starting as early as January. In a memo, he wrote, "These layoffs would have a cascading effect on depots and procurement. Similar actions would follow for the Marine Corps about a month later."

House Democrats appear to have based their tactics on the assumption that the surge would fail. They should revise their strategy to take advantage of the success of the surge by concentrating on the political side of the equation and joining in a bipartisan effort to spur the Iraqi government toward long-promised measures to achieve reconciliation. In a recent interview with the congressional newspaper The Hill, South Carolina's senior senator, Lindsey Graham, said he is considering support for alternatives to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government if Iraq's politicians do not step up to the plate. "If his government has not delivered meaningful political reconciliation by the end of the year, given the success of the surge and better security, I will consider his government a failure," he said. "And then we look for other horses to support."

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., made a similar point: "From the standpoint of a pure military side, good things are happening. From the standpoint of stabilizing the government, that is not happening, so whatever we can do as a Congress to move more in that direction, I think there will be a lot of support for that."

Sen. Graham has described the military surge, fittingly, as "one of the most successful counter-insurgency military operations in American history."

It must be followed up by a political surge from a united Congress in Washington and from a reinvigorated government in Baghdad.