The news from Iraq lately has not, as we all know, been very good (though today we learned of some progress toward getting Sunni leaders involved in the process of drafting an Iraqi constitution). And here at home, public opinion surveys are beginning to show a rapid decline in public support for some sort of indefinite and massive U.S. military presence in Iraq -- in part because of steadily mounting documentary evidence of just how poorly the post-war occupation of Iraq was planned and executed.

Critics of the Iraqi invasion will argue that the current mess was the inevitable and unavoidable outcome of the decision to go to war (not that this argument has much relevance to the question of current and future U.S. policy in Iraq). But as Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution shows in an important new book, there was a "path not taken" in post-war Iraq that provides important lessons for how we ought to proceed right now.

In Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, Diamond indicts the Bush administration for a pattern of "arrogance, ignorance, isolation, and incompetence" in planning and carrying out the post-invasion occupation of Iraq. And he certainly had a front-row seat from which to evaluate it. Although he opposed the invasion, Diamond, a widely respected expert on "democracy-building," was recruited by the administration to serve on the staff of the Coalition Provisional Authority set up to manage the transition from war to peace. His experience led to this book, which provides not only a fascinating birds-eye view of events in Iraq, but also a clear identification of the key, avoidable mistakes made by U.S. civilian and military officials. These include, above all, a grossly inadequate troop deployment to secure the country; failure to quickly set up an Iraqi provisional government; and abrupt liquidation of the Iraqi Armed Forces, many of whose members promptly joined the insurgency. (Note: the Progressive Policy Institute held a forum on this book today, featuring Diamond, Paul Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute, and PPI president Will Marshall. )

But though Diamond's account of past mistakes is important and instructive, his suggestions for how these mistakes can be overcome are even more important.

Diamond argues for a three-prong "correction" of our policies in Iraq to avoid a fatal slide from "squandered victory" to defeat: a clear, public statement by the president that we do not want a permanent military presence in Iraq; an equally clear statement that our withdrawal is strictly contingent on the ability of the permanent and constitutional Iraqi government of the near future to govern the country; and a serious, internationally facilitated nation-building exercise aimed at securing Sunni participation in the government and getting the nation's economy going again. In particular, Diamond's idea of a contingent "exit strategy" would make it clear that Iraqis, not Americans, control their own destiny and must fight for a democratic future. It could help convince Sunni leaders that their goal of ending the U.S. presence in Iraq can best, and perhaps can only, be achieved by abandoning the insurgency and engaging in peaceful political activity.

This is an approach we encourage Democrats to embrace, as opposed to the current stampede on Capitol Hill toward proposals to set a fixed, arbitrary, and early deadline for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. A fixed exit date would indeed risk "emboldening" the Iraqi insurgency to hang on until we are gone, and which Islamist extremists everywhere would try to turn into a massive propaganda victory.

It is equally important, however, to understand that the erosion of U.S. domestic political support for our presence in Iraq; the inability of the Iraqi interim government thus far to consolidate its authority; and the steady loss of international credibility by the Bush administration are all factors that embolden the insurgency, and Islamists as well.

But the very "arrogance, ignorance, isolation, and incompetence" that Diamond says the administration displayed in post-war Iraq did not come out of nowhere, and absent a public admission of past mistakes, it is certainly premature to assume the architects of the "squandered victory" have learned their lesson and are now on course to succeed.

That is why we think political leaders in both parties need to begin consistently putting pressure on the president to make a clear public statement about his administration's strategy for Iraq going forward. If they have a better approach than Diamond's, let's hear it. This administration and the Commander-in-Chief owe that to our country, to Iraqis uncertain about our intentions, and, most of all, to the American and other coalition troops and Iraqi citizens who have lost their lives, or who continue to risk them, in a cause whose future hangs in the balance.