The Democrats' Cynical Timing

"This war is lost." No, that was not said by some angry protester, not by some gloating terrorist, but by the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Harry Reid, in remarks to journalists Thursday.

That's the same Harry Reid who voted only three months ago to confirm General David Petraeus as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Gen. Petraeus appeared before the Senate--Reid's Senate--to describe a new strategy in Iraq, backed by almost 28,000 additional US troops. Petraeus detailed his plans and warned he would need at least six months to achieve success. Reid voted to give him that chance. So did 80 other senators: Petraeus was confirmed 81-0.

Those 28,000 troops are flowing into Iraq at this very moment. They will continue to arrive into the summer.

But the new "clear and hold" strategy has already gone into effect: U.S. troops carried out 7,400 patrols in Baghdad in the first week of February 2007--and 20,000 in the second week.

Despite last week's atrocious bombings in Baghdad, the surge is already yielding results.

At a press briefing Friday in Washington, Pentagon officials pointed out that attacks on civilians in Baghdad dropped by 50 percent in the first six weeks of the new plan as compared to the six weeks before the plan began. Civilian casualties across Iraq declined by 24 percent in the first six weeks of the new plan as compared to the six weeks before.

Baghdad's Shiite militias have gone to ground, and U.S. military intelligence believes that the radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr has fled to Iran.

For the first time since the January 2005 elections, strong and positive news is coming to Iraq. And this is the moment that the leader of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate chooses to throw in the towel?

Reid's office hastily issued a semi-retraction: "As long as we follow the President's path in Iraq, the war is lost. But there is still a chance to change course--and we must change course."

What might such a course look like? Reid is clear about only one thing: The new course begins with a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Democrats disagree amongst themselves when that withdrawal should start. Reid says 12 months from now. Some of the more liberal Democrats in the House of Representatives say six months. The most radical want to start the pullout in just two.

But almost all Democrats agree that the right time to announce their decision to quit is right now, right in the middle of the surge, right in the middle of the battle.

Some cynical Republicans wonder whether Democrats want to cut off the troops now precisely because they fear that the surge might succeed.

Others suspect that the Democrats are just posturing: They count on the President to defy them and continue the surge anyway. If the surge works, the public will forget or anyway not care that the Democrats opposed it. If it fails, they can say, "I told you so."

Whatever the motive, 40 years after Vietnam, the Democrats remain a party desperately uncomfortable with military force. Democrats can tolerate the use of force only for very short intervals, so long as casualties remain low and the media remain indulgent, as happened in Kosovo in 1999. But let the war prove long or hard, let events unfold in surprising or frustrating ways, then they just fold up like accordions.

Even relatively hawkish Democrats cannot resist. Look at Joe Biden, the Delaware Democrat who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Long robust on Iraq, Biden now shrugs off the surge's early successes. The surge, he wrote in an April 12 op-ed, is just "squeezing a water balloon." If conditions improve in Baghdad, well that's just a preliminary to deterioration elsewhere. He has called for withdrawal to begin within three months.

The U.S. public has soured on Iraq, and politicians like Reid and Biden have absorbed that mood. The Democrats benefited from this sourness in 2006, and they are betting everything on benefiting more in 2008. Well maybe.

But here is another bet. Since Vietnam, Democrats have struggled desperately and unavailingly against their image as the party of weakness on national security. In March 2005, a group of elected Democrats headed by Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh warned their colleagues: "No political party will gain or hold power--nor will it deserve to--if it cannot provide people with a basic sense of security." They added: "While we have roundly condemned the Bush administration's mistakes in Iraq, it is essential that partisan enmity not obscure America's vital interest in helping the newly elected Iraqi government succeed." Good advice--but advice that has long since been discarded as Democrats in Congress rush to embrace defeat.