Patience in Iraq May Yet Prevail

After a week's vacation, we return to the world of current events to find that folks seem to be catching on to the notion that the Iraq situation can just maybe be finished with success. We draw the briefest of attention to the following:

• House Dem Whip James Clyburn says that a positive report from General Petraeus will likely split Democrats and impede efforts to draw up a "timetable for withdrawal" (a.k.a. self-imposed terms of surrender).
• The Gray Lady herself yesterday published a piece by two analysts from the left-leaning Brookings Institution arguing that the war is on the right footing now and looks amenable to a decent outcome if the surge is allowed to continue.
• New British PM Gordon Brown, thought to be more of the anti-Iraq wing of the Labour Party than his esteemed predecessor, nevertheless disappointed opponents of the war by affirming his nation's solidarity with the United States in a long struggle against militant Islam. Brown explicitly affirmed the value of the effort in Iraq in that regard.

Of course, it was only a couple of weeks ago that Harry Reid was saying that we don't need to wait until September because everybody knows that Bush's war is a failure. We think that statement was close enough to "don't confuse me with the facts because my mind is made up" that Reid should make the latter his party's slogan for the 2008 senatorial campaign.