Editorial

When General David Petraeus was given 30,000 troop reinforcements earlier this year, the buzzword in the Iraq saga became "surge". There was to be a "surge strategy" in an effort to bring a greater peace to the country. On September 15, the American Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and Gen. Petraeus, the senior commander in Iraq, will be submitting a progress report to the President - and to Congress.

It is not unreasonable on the part of George Bush to ask for judgment on the success or otherwise of the "surge" to be delayed until after that report is made. This has not prevented American senators from voicing their opinion anyway and for the battle between the White Houses and the Democrat-controlled US Congress over a timetable for withdrawal to go on apace.

Hillary Clinton actually called for the removal of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki by what she called "democratic means, of course".

As Mr Maliki was voted into office, with his government, by the most democratic means in a free election that had not been seen before in Iraq, the remarks of the front-runner in the Democrat party for the Presidency sounded a trifle self-serving and rash.'

The President is determined that there will be no premature exit from Iraq. Addressing war veterans earlier this week, he told them: "Many argued that if we pulled out (of Vietnam) there would be no consequences for the Vietnamese people". Those "misimpressions" were "costly... In Cambodia the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands died by starvation, torture or execution. In Vietnam, former American allies, government workers, intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished".

"Despite the mistakes that have been made, despite the problems we have encountered, seeing the Iraqis through as they build their democracy is critical to keeping the American people safe from the terrorists who want to attack us," Mr Bush insisted.

The main problems in Iraq at the moment, for all the reports of suicide bombers aiming their cargo at innocent civilians, is not so much military, although God knows that it is that as well. They are two.

The first is an unseemly row that has broken out between American and British "spokesmen" over what seems to be the imminent withdrawal of British troops from Basra without enough thought given by the British, the Americans claim, to the void in that strategic area unless its is filled by US troops.

The second is a disturbing inability on the part of the Iraqi government to avoid the pitfalls of factionalism. This is a worrying factor for Mr Bush, who was recently on record as saying that "clearly, the Iraqi government's got to do more", but later expressed his continued backing for Mr Maliki.

The truth seems to be, ironically, that whereas there have been reports of progress on the military front and evidence that the "surge" is producing results, the political process lags behind.

The current obstacle to the success of the military-political offensive in a very fluid situation is that what the military achieves, when it does achieve, is being weakened by a political failure to put aside differences and for the Iraqi government to present a united front to the Iraqi people. A truly unifying and therefore determining factor to the outcome of the war seems to be missing. This is tragic.

A more troubling factor has crept into the Iraq situation and that is the local political context in which the struggle against terrorists is being conducted.