The conventional wisdom had been that, by campaign's end, withdrawal-happy Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will have had to move so far off his position on Iraq that it will be virtually indistinguishable from those in the standing-down-when-they-stand-up camp.

That's not happening. Most of the movement these days has come from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and President George W. Bush, whose Iraq and Afghanistan stances had, since the Iraq troop surge, been pretty much from the same stand-down, stand-up, Afghanistan-is-secondary playbook.

The problem with that strategy, of course, has been its inability to describe what victory in Iraq looks like, its tendency to seem more open-ended than an unwanted in-law's "short" visit and how divorced it is from the stakes and reasons for being in Afghanistan.

Dizzying events have accompanied the run-up to Obama's foreign trip this week and the trip itself, which included stops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week, Obama began making an even stronger case that the war in Iraq diverted needed attention and resources from the necessary war in Afghanistan. This prompted McCain to say he, too, wants more troops in Afghanistan, while sticking to being enamored with the success of the surge in Iraq and pooh-poohing Obama's withdrawal talk.

This week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki buttressed his earlier comments about his desire for a U.S. withdrawal with statements that nearly embrace Obama's withdrawal strategy.

At the same time, Bush, in a sharp departure, is accepting a "time horizon" for withdrawal, while insisting that this isn't a timeline. And McCain has to content himself with attacking Obama for opposing the surge that, he says, makes any withdrawal possible.

Amid this political cacophony, there really is only one thing that is clear. Iraqis are showing us the door. They are uncomfortable with any status-of-forces agreement that supposes continued high levels of U.S. troop presence.

If the ability to claim victory is the only thing hampering anyone's appetite for a withdrawal timeline, the Iraqis are handing the United States just such an opportunity on a silver platter.

It could be that this is political theater, Iraqi style. But if the current president is not courageous enough to open that door the Iraqis are offering to see what's behind it, the next president must.

That's because Afghanistan - where al-Qaida and the Taliban have been able to gather strength while the U.S. was mired in Iraq - is the real war of necessity. And waging that will be nigh on impossible if the war in Iraq remains open-ended, even if Iraqis demand that it not be.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.

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