Indeed, I suspect not all Democrats really believe the party's campaign rhetoric that Iraq is a lost cause, especially given that widely admired generals like John Abizaid, George Casey and David Petraeus (who have fared well when queried by Democratic senators in hearings and on trips to Iraq) still feel they can change tactics to secure the country.
Pulling out will endanger the Kurds, Iraqi reformers, the sanctity of U.S. pledges abroad, and the reputation of the American military for generations. It would be hard to believe Democrats want to someday read, as we do now of Vietnam, that we were close to stabilizing Iraq when the funding to do so was cut off.
Third, based on past democratic unease with the realism associated with former Secretary of State James Baker, now co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, as well as anger over what's happening in Darfur, I'd venture that some Democrats are a little uneasy about renouncing entirely the effort to promote strenuously human rights and democracy abroad. Not all believed Iraq was about oil or Halliburton.
Of course, most Democrats believe Bush is usually wrong — but maybe not always completely wrong. After all, Syria got out of Lebanon, Libya abandoned its weapons of mass destruction, and gulf sheikdoms have been pressured to reform — all of which might just operate in reverse if the U.S. is to abruptly withdraw from Iraq.
In short, despite the election posturing, the Democrats in charge of ensuring a lasting majority are, as of now, somewhat quiet. Can it be that they are seeing that the only choices we have had after Sept. 11 have been mostly either bad or worse — and that, for those in power hoping both to prevent another such attack on our soil and not to "lose Iraq," there aren't any easy solutions?