Victor Davis Hanson, a registered Democrat and among the most insightful current commentators on America’s role in the Middle East, predicts in this NRO Online piece that the Democratic party’s approach to the current Presidential campaign is doomed to failure. The entire piece is well worth reading, but here is a tidbit:

No one wishes to occupy a country. But after the instability in Iraq and a cost nearing 400 combat deaths the Democrats are now not merely questioning the tactics of achieving democracy in Iraq, but the entire notion of occupation itself. But once they go down that road they will discover history is not on their side and will be hard put to offer better alternatives to the present course.
For the record, not occupying Germany in 1918 led to the myth that the Prussians were never beaten, but stabbed in the back while occupying foreign territory ? a terrible mistake not repeated with postwar Japan and Germany. It might have been neater and quicker to leave Afghanistan after the Soviets were expelled in the 1980s and to depart Haiti in a flash, but the wages of those exit strategies were the Taliban and September 11 as well as the current mess in the Caribbean. The first Bush administration left the present jumble in Iraq to the second, which to its everlasting credit is determined not to leave it to others. Had Mr. Clinton bombed and then just left the Balkans, rather than the present costly and bothersome peace we would have had the sectarian and tribal sort of ruin that surely will get worse if we run now from Iraq.
Since the Democrats viciously and clumsily have attacked one of the most courageous (and humane) policies of any administration in the last 30 years, the American people will soon come to ask what they in fact will propose instead (“put up or shut up”). Most of us are cognizant that bombing from 40,000 feet gives an “exit strategy,” but, without soldiers on the ground, postpones the problem of tyrannical resurgence ? and thus will inevitably leave either another war for another generation or something far worse still on the horizon like September 11.
There were a number of legitimate areas of debate for the fall campaign ? deficits, unfunded security measures at home, moral scrutiny over postwar contracts, more help for Afghanistan, greater control of domestic entitlements, unworkable immigration proposals, and the like. But instead of statesmanship from the opposition, we got slander about Mr. Bush’s National Guard service, misrepresentations about intelligence failures that had hampered both previous administrations and the present congress, preference for an unsupportable European position over our own, and stupidity about what to do in Iraq.
The Democrats may have seen some short-term gains from all the attention given to their bluster, but theirs still remain untenable issues. And so nemesis will bite them like they will not believe in the autumn ? and, of course, just when it matters most.