Campaigning in Iowa over the weekend, Sen. Hillary Clinton issued a demand that Pres. Bush bring troops home from Iraq before he leaves office:

“This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy,” the Democratic senator from New York said her in initial presidential campaign swing through Iowa.

“We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office” in January 2009, the former first lady said.

This is smart because it pushes the responsibility for the war back onto the president, who has been trying to toss his hot potato to Democrats since they took control of Congress in November.

The proposal also provides an answer to the Republican talking-points challenge that Democrats don’t have a plan for getting out of Iraq. You want plan? Here’s a plan: You broke it, you fix it.

The senator’s challenge also reflects polling that shows that most Americans (52 percent in the most recent ABC/WaPo) want U.S. troops to leave Iraq, whether or not civil order is restored.

What Sen. Clinton’s proposal does not do is prevent U.S. forces from needlessly dying or being injured for two years while Bush dithers.