Withdrawal symptoms.(AT WAR II)

WE may not know the best way to win in Iraq, but we do know the one guaranteed way to lose: pulling out U.S. troops prematurely. That happens to be the policy favored in some form or other by most Democrats, although they disagree with one another about how forthright to be about it. It is sign of the party's incoherence that every time a high-profile Democrat such as John Murtha or John Kerry proposes a pullout plan and Republicans insist on putting it to a vote, Democrats cry foul.

The party has had a complicated relationship with its convictions on the war from the beginning. In 2002, it demanded a full debate and congressional vote authorizing the war. When Republicans gave them just that in October 2002, they screamed that it was unfair to make them vote on a matter of national significance prior to an election. Democrats feared that their anti-war convictions wouldn't sell well with the public, so some of them voted for the war without truly believing in it. A few of them, such as Kerry, have been trying to squirm out of their votes ever since. But they don't think their preferred course on Iraq now--an immediate pullout--is popular either, so, until recently, they merely flirted with proposing such a course, always pulling back from the edge.

Kerry finally went over the edge a few weeks ago when he called for a pullout in six months. After careful strategic study--guffaw here--he then switched to favoring a pullout over a year. Other Democrats were irked when Kerry made them vote on his "plan" in the Senate; it got just 13 votes. The Democrats' preferred resolution, which also went down to defeat, called for the beginning of a withdrawal by the end of the year. This was a ...