Do We Even Know What Progress Looks Like Anymore?

In their own little bit of theater, Congressional Democrats have held back sending the funding bill for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Prez until Tuesday, which also happens to be the fourth anniversary of his swaggering across the deck of an aircraft carrier to proclaim, "Mission Accomplished." The New York Times is reporting that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will have a ceremony of their own for the occasion.

At this point, this is his war to explain and promote, so anything they can offer to make the point that he's vetoing an attempt to get an endgame started, ignoring an ever-popular exit strategy, the more the war becomes an albatross around his neck (not that he'll apparently notice). Bush keeps insisting that we have to let the military commanders on the ground plan their own way to victory, but it's becoming more and more obvious that expectations of progress and success are fading from view. Saturday's NYTimes even had a headline to that effect: "The White House Scales Back Talk of Iraq Progress." Here are a few tidbits:

The Bush administration will not try to assess whether the troop increase in Iraq is producing signs of political progress or greater security until September, and many of Mr. Bush's top advisers now anticipate that any gains by then will be limited, according to senior administration officials.

In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

. . .
The new view of Mr. Maliki's limitations was put bluntly by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, who spent the week pressing Congress not to put limits on either the timing or conduct of his operations, as he described what he discovered upon returning to Iraq after a two-year hiatus.

"He's not the Prime Minister Tony Blair of Iraq," General Petraeus said of Mr. Maliki on Thursday. "He does not have a parliamentary majority. He does not have his ministers in all of the different ministries," and they "sometimes sound a bit discordant in their statements to the press and their statements to other countries. It’s a very, very challenging situation in which to lead."

. . .
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates found himself pressing Mr. Maliki last week to keep Parliament from taking a two-month summer break. If lawmakers remain in Baghdad, said one senior American official who did not want to be identified because he was discussing internal White House deliberations, "we'll have some outputs then."

He added, "That's different from having outcomes," drawing a distinction between a sign of activity and a sign of success, which could take considerably longer.

Whatever you do, don't confuse outcomes with outputs. This would almost be comical if the body count didn't keep rising. What exactly is the message these days? Congress must not interfere with the plans of the military commanders on the ground, because they might come up with actual plans at any moment. If anybody happens to notice when progress is allowed back into the equation, let me know!