The line of the day, as Democratic Senators grilled General Petraeus, was that he was presiding over a fight with “no exit strategy.” This is a telling turn of phrase, and a meaningful one. Obviously, a nation doesn’t need an “exit strategy” when it fights a war it wins; the exit strategy in such a war is victory. When a nation wins a war, what it exits from is the violence of that war. The war’s end means an end to military violence. The question that follows a victory is not how to exit, but rather what the nature of the victor’s engagement will be. By calling for an exit strategy after nine months of progress toward victory, Democrats are doing nothing less than demanding that Petraeus frame his entire mission in Iraq through the prism of defeat.