Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter gives the Democrats extremely canny advice here – to drop phrases like “strategic redeployment” when talking about their plans to get out of Iraq in favor of “pull and strike,” according to which we would extricate ourselves from the Sunni-Shia civil war and go after Al Qaeda in Iraq instead. The real question raised by Alter’s plan is this: Are the Democrats in favor of pulling out of Iraq because they don’t want to be involved in a civil war, or because they have embraced an essentially pacifistic view of the conflict according to which fighting in Iraq at all is the problem and not the solution?

I don’t think there’s a clear answer to this. The combination of simple political negative calculation — it’s Bush’s war and it’s unpopular, therefore we’re against it — and ideological conviction — the war itself is bad and immoral — has proved to be a winner for Democrats in one sense. They can place themselves all over the map on this one but still be better than the Evildoer in the White House. Will the presidential election and the Congressional elections next year force them to design an actual policy for Iraq that differs significantly from Bush’s but is also workable and fairly tough-minded? Perhaps — except that those who think the American role is immoral will not be placated, and they are the most passionate voices in the anti-war debate.