There appears to be a growing consensus that come September, Gen. David Petraeus is going to say exactly what the administration wants to hear, throw some red-meat to the Republican base by asserting that the surge is indeed making progress - and thus, we need to give it more time, and perhaps more troops, and victory will be just around the corner.

Or something like that. Progressives are suspicious of this, for good reason. Petraeus seems to have permitted himself, on several occasions, to be used as a partisan prop. But you have to be careful to not set up a situation where legitimate good news is ridiculed and rejected; just because the situation in Iraq seems irredeemable doesn’t mean Petraeus’ inevitable report of progress will be untrue, or entirely untrue. Frankly, there is some evidence to suggest the surge has had some effect.

But the operative question is whether the American people - all of them, not just right-wingers who support the war - can expect Petraeus to be entirely candid.

Glenn Greenwald highlights a recent Petraeus appearance on the right-wing Hugh Hewitt radio program. It was quite interesting what he had to say - he did, as Greenwald suggests, say in not so many words that “the Surge is working, we are winning, Al Qaeda is on the run, The Terrorists are being killed, and Freedom is on the March.” He also said this:

Beyond that, obviously, Iraq has the second or third most proven oil resources in the world. It is blessed with other mineral wealth as well that is very substantial, and has enormous potential in the global economy.

Something to remember as conservatives continue to insist this has nothing to do with any of that.

He also notes that it often takes “about a decade or so for the average counterinsurgency to be sorted out.” Which gives us, perhaps, six more years in Iraq - or 10, if you count the beginning of the Surge as a do-over.

Hewitt tries to bait him into bad-mouthing the media’s reporting on the war; Petraeus doesn’t take that bait. And so there are certain aspects of Hewitt’s interview that are reassuring; maybe the general’s September report won’t be as pre-scripted as some suspect. Even those who have opposed this war hope this will be the case.

But the question remains, even if the surge proves to be temporarily restricting violence, to what end? Even Petraeus acknowledges that the surge can’t last forever; we simply do not have the wherewithal to maintain this level of commitment for the six or 10 years he himself suggests may be necessary. As “Crunchy con” Rod Dreher writes today, “The ugly truth is, the only way there’s going to be a settled peace in Iraq is if the two (at least two) sides fight it out, and separate their populations. If we were to stay there with current troop strength for 30 years, this would still be the case. We are a superpower, but we are not omnipotent.”

We are banking on Petraeus doing the impossible - achieving not just a military solution, for a military solution alone won’t solve this problem; we are banking on the hope that the time his surge is buying will allow the Iraqis themselves to come to a political solution. In this, we anoint what James Fallows calls the “new Jesus,” for we require a miracle. Perhaps in September Petraeus will convince us that he’s gotten atop the water. But it’s a helluva long walk to the other shore.