The tough way forward

THIS HAS NOT been an auspicious week for the Bush administration’s efforts to convince the American people that its “new way forward” in Iraq is gaining traction. “We’ve said there are going to be good days and bad days concerning the security plan,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

Thursday was a bad day. At this point, the administration’s best argument may be that appearances are deceiving.

On Thursday, hours after a truck bomb destroyed a bridge across the Tigris River, a suicide bomber struck the cafeteria of the Iraqi parliament complex. Even if the explosion was the result of shoddy security, it will be seen as an iconic reflection of the larger failure to secure Baghdad. Comparisons already are being made to the 1968 Tet Offensive, in which the Viet Cong attacked the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

It didn’t help that Thursday’s violence in the supposedly secure Green Zone came a day after the Pentagon announced 90-day extensions for active-duty Army troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The juxtaposition of the two news stories will provide fodder for critics who believe that American service members are being stretched in a futile cause.

Yet this and other bad news almost surely won’t sidetrack the new direction Bush announced in January, the centerpiece of which is a “surge” of 21,500 additional combat troops and thousands of support personnel. That the surge would involve greater hardship for U.S. service members was a foregone conclusion -- which is partly why it was so controversial.

Support the surge or oppose it (and we have supported it as a last, best hope to stabilize Iraq), President Bush, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Army Gen. David H. Petraeus probably will be able to work their will for at least another year. Even the emergency funding bill passed by the House, which contains a mandatory timetable, would not require complete withdrawal until Aug. 31, 2008. The Senate version includes a nonbinding target date of March 31, 2008.

Bush has indicated that he would veto even the Senate approach. But after all the to and fro, Congress is expected to provide the funding and supplies necessary to test whether the surge -- coupled, ideally, with diplomatic initiatives -- can restore civil order in Iraq over the next 12 months.

If not, the trajectory of public and congressional opinion suggests that Congress will make good on Bush’s insistence three months ago that “America’s commitment is not open-ended” -- whether the president likes it or not.