While the Democrats in Washington consider revisiting the war authorization, Bob Novak says it is Pennsylvania Congressman Jack Murtha who is now running the show.

Never in my life have I faced a political situation so difficult to read as the one we face today. As I have written many times, the polling data regarding Iraq says that the American people, as has been their traditional posture regarding limited wars, are fed up with the Iraq War and wish to end our involvement. However, if you ask people whether they want victory, a majority will say yes. As was the case in Korea and Vietnam, the American people want to achieve a military victory. As was the case in Korea and Vietnam, they will be denied that victory because it cannot be achieved without a brutal escalation of the war that is either geo-politically unwise or unacceptable to the media and cultural elites that rule our country. In Korea, any attempt to achieve traditional victory meant an expansion of the war against the People's Republic of China, possibly leading to nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. In Vietnam, a traditional victory was only possible with either an invasion of the North or a massive expansion of bombing earlier in the conflict, both courses of action could have led to war with the PRC or the Soviet Union. In Iraq, victory could have been had with a much larger American force, with much more robust rules of engagement. But their has not been a willingness on the part of the President to do what is necessary to win, almost from the start. History will condemn him for it. For now, though, we are stuck with a military situation that is poor, and a political situation here at home that is hopeless.

After Vietnam, the Democrats were tagged as being the party that could not be trusted with America's defense. Eventually, this led to their string of defeats in Presidential elections and, ultimately, in Congress. Could this happen again? I think so. While they are now working assiduously to follow through on what they believe to be their mandate from the American people to end the war, they are really cementing into the public consciousness their old image as the party of weakness and surrender. This is unfair, of course. They are victims of the inherent weakness of our system, which relies for governance on a class of people whose instincts regarding war are out of sync with the majority (who simply want to use any and all measures necessary to smash our foes into powder). For this, they will surely be punished, unfairly or not.