Photo via christhedunn.

Despite the fact that opinion polls for the last year have shown strong majorities anxious to withdraw American combat troops from Iraq, irrespective of what is happening on the ground, it is an article of absolute faith among Republicans and their almost ordained standard bearer that the American people don't really believe what they've repeatedly said.

And so when John McCain is asked why, if the surge is so successful, he still opposes withdrawal, and labels the Democrats as advocates of "surrender," he is reduced to the argument that once Americans fully understand the consequences of unilateral withdrawal, they will accept the wisdom and necessity of staying for as long as it takes for the US to achieve victory, however victory is defined.

By contrast, Clinton and Obama seem convinced that the American people have sorted out the essentials. The war was a mistake; the politicians who led us into that invasion and occupation committed a huge strategic blunder -- as Obama notes, "they drove us into a ditch" -- and those who wish to stay cannot be trusted either to analyze America's strategic interests or extract us from their own blunders. It's a simple argument, and it's compelling.

Frank Rich opines on how this logic could play out for John McCain and his inability to transcend his own past and the limitations of his own analysis:

Rather than dwell on this ancient history, Mr. McCain said last week, we should talk about “what we are going to do now.” But his answer to “what we are going to do now” in Iraq is merely more of what he did then.

If, as he says, the surge is “succeeding,” voters may well join the Democratic ticket (possibly including the Vietnam War hero Jim Webb?) in asking why we’ll still have some 140,000 troops on indefinite duty in Iraq as of this summer, a year and a half after this “temporary” escalation was announced. It will be a slam-dunk for Democrats to argue that it’s long past time for the Iraqis to stand up on a sensible timetable that will allow the Americans to stand down.

It’s also possible, especially now that Iraq’s provincial elections have been abruptly scuttled by warring Shiite factions, that the surge will stop “succeeding” and Iraq will again erupt in sectarian violence. Then Mr. McCain will have to propose a new and larger surge — and explain how he’ll pay for it while the economy slumps and he extends the Bush tax cuts. Either way, he offers voters no tangible exit strategy beyond his constant refrain that the commander in chief should take his orders from Gen. David Petraeus.

The White House has set up the fall to give General Petraeus another opportunity to save them from their own blunders. This last week's manipulation of the withdrawal "pause" stories was apparently designed to keep the public dangling for McCain's benefit. General Petraeus will then appear before Congress next September to tell us that the "surge" has been successful, but we need the troops to protect the provincial elections and/or more time is needed to determine whether further withdrawals would be catastrophic to the Iraqis and US interests. And some in the media are already buying it.

But I suspect the American people have made the same judgment about Iraq they made 30 years ago about Vietnam. They want out, and anyone who says we should leave will carry the day, no matter what else is happening.

This is not a logic the Republicans can understand or accept. They will try to avoid this dilemma by insisting that no matter what the surge outcome is, any withdrawal would be a self-inflicted defeat with awful consequences. They will campaign against surrender, because they can't imagine doing otherwise.

It's hard to know what will happen if we actually begin to withdraw in earnest. Many but not all Iraqis may breath a huge sigh of relief and then through fits and starts begin to sort out their own affairs without the crushing pressure of an occupation. Some may become endangered and require our attention, and it may be ugly for a long time. But Democrat should have no illusions about getting help from Republicans on seeing this through.

No matter what the facts are on the ground, the Democratic President will be vilified for surrendering to the enemy, betraying our troops, and abandoning our Iraqi allies. Republicans will argue, as McCain already has, that the Democrats risk "handing a country over to al Qaeda," even though the chances that a majority Shia regime and its best friends in Iran will allow that is probably zero. The Republicans will do every thing they can to obscure the fact they got us into this horrible mess and no only had no plan for getting us out but foolishly created conditions making it harder to leave. Indeed, facing likely electoral defeat in November, the principal foreign policy goal of the McCain candidacy is not to "save" Iraq but to blame the Democrats for losing it.