The "surge" as it was announced did not look like a serious attempt. Some 21,500 troops for a few months, essentially early deployments or prolonged stays, and some movement from the provinces to Baghdad were announced. The "surge" was sold as a temporary measure because the U.S. public would not agree to any longer troop increase. Now the real surge comes to light bit by bit.

In Germany we call this Salami Taktik, cutting the resistance chop by chop. As one slice an extended timeframe has now been presented:

The day-to-day commander of American forces in Iraq has recommended that the heightened American troop levels there be maintained through February 2008, military officials said Wednesday.

and more troops are asked for:

When the Bush administration announced its troop buildup in January, it said it was sending 21,500 troops to Baghdad and Anbar Province. Since then, the Pentagon has said that as many as 7,000 additional support troops would also be deployed, including some 2,200 additional military police that General Petraeus had asked for to handle an anticipated increase in detainees.

(I doubt the NYT reporting here. From my understanding the 2,200 MPs are not part of the 7,000 support troops but on top of that.)

There will be more requests like these and more immediate needs for even more troops and a longer timeframe. This will continue until there is some serious political resistance. But don’t hold your breath for such.

Some liberal dems came up with a simple and good legislative amendment. They would "fund withdrawal" rather than defund the war. All new war funds could only be used for an immediate withdrawal and the force protection needed for that. But the moderate House democrats would not have that. Pelosi just announced to add some language to the war funding that may lead to a pullout by fall 2008. The Senate dems will make sure to water that already very soft drink down some more.

Bill Lind sees a simple election strategy behind this:

For the Democrats, what’s not to like is anything that might actually end the war before the 2008 elections. The Republicans have 21 Senate seats up in 2008, and if the Iraq war is still going on, they can count on losing most of them, along with the Presidency and maybe 100 more seats in the House. […] From the standpoint of the Democratic Party’s leadership, a few thousand more dead American troops is a small price to pay for so glowing a political victory.

But that is only the tactical view.

Until I hear some of these heavyweight and low brained Dems like Biden and Clinton the She denounce the strategy of empire and call for giving up those fine four super-bases in Iraq, I’ll stick to my assessment that they do not want a withdrawal at all. Unless such withdrawal means to steal away from the duty of an occupying power while still occupying and to sit back within those bases until the civil war burned itself out. That would lower the number of troops killed and keep the assets plus some of their beloved strategic perspectives.

So there is no hope for any real change and Lind may well be right saying:

The likely result of all this Washington dodging is that events on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere will outrun the political process. That in turn means a systemic crisis, the abandonment of both parties by their bases and a possible left-right grass roots alliance against the corrupt and incompetent center. In that possibility may lie the nation’s best hope.

But that is a very small hope and anyway – the nation that really needs hope and really would benefit from an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops is Iraq.