Senator Ted Kennedy, who would withhold
money for a 'surge' in US troop numbers.
Photograph: Gerald Herbert/APIraq is a problem not just for George Bush but also for the Democrats, who oppose the war but are terrified of being accused of pulling the rug out from under US troops.
Let's start with the president. Bush is expected to announce plans to send an extra 20,000 troops to Iraq when he unveils his "new strategy" tomorrow. But the polls make it clear that Americans overwhelmingly oppose this "surge", on top of the 130,000 troops already there.
A USA Today poll shows 61% of people against, and only 36% for, a troop increase. And in an ABC-Washington Post poll, six out of 10 respondents said the war was not worth fighting, while only 17% favoured a troop increase.
Despite such sentiments, the Democrats - who made gains in the November midterms because of Iraq - are unsure how hard to press the president.
Some, such as Senator Ted Kennedy, want to withhold spending on a troop increase. But others, such as Senator Joseph Biden, think the approach impractical and argue that Congress cannot second-guess the president's military strategy.
That the Democrats are in a pickle of their own is unsurprising, as they do not want to go down in history as being responsible for "losing Iraq".
Some bloggers, such as Gateway Pundit and the Tallahassee Sentinel, are already sharpening their knives, accusing the Democrats of being "about to lose another war for this great nation".
From the other end of the political spectrum, Lawrence Velvel fulminates against the Democrats' "political cowardice", accusing the party of being worried more about "their own political futures than the deaths of thousands". Velvel says it is time to stiffen Democratic spines with a mass protest.
"If Democratic lack of fortitude is so pronounced that stopping the war requires a march so huge that Washington has never seen anything like it and will in various ways be hard pressed by it, then so be it. Better such a march than two more years of this war."
Meanwhile, Slate's Fred Kaplan is the latest commentator to argue that a troop surge of 20,000 troops will not be enough to save Iraq, regardless of the brilliance of David Petraeus, Bush's new commander for Iraq and co-author of the army's new counter-insurgency manual. Kaplan writes:
"One point they made is that it requires lot of manpower - at minimum, 20 combat troops for every 1,000 people in the area's population. Baghdad has about 6 million people; so clearing, holding, and building it will require about 120,000 combat troops."
So why make this apparently futile gesture? It is hard to argue with the point made by some readers of Guardian Unlimited's News blog yesterday: that Bush is playing for time, postponing the final debacle until he is out of the White House.
