BAGHDAD — Imagine what might happen were a suicide bomber to detonate himself at the Rayburn cafeteria. Would the first reaction of our lawmakers be that of Latif Haji Dartash, a Kurdish representative, who told me in a nearby parking lot after the Iraqi parliament was bombed that there is no way this attack would prevent him from meeting with his fellow legislators?

Would our Congress convene the next day, as the Iraqis did, even though some of the plotters might still be at large? When there was even a rumor that the air-ducts of some office buildings on Capitol Hill were filled with anthrax powder, the House of Representatives evacuated.

As it was, the terrorism at the Iraqi legislature last week presented an opportunity for the Congressional leaders to score a point or two in their fight to defund the war.

Senator Kerry certainly wasted no time, saying, “This is the progress we’ve been hearing about? And tell me, how are more American troops going to stop a single fanatic with explosives strapped to his chest.” The majority leader, Senator Reid, took the opportunity to tell reporters how out of touch President Bush is. See we told you this war could not be won, the Congressional leaders were saying, using it in their long running infomercial against the war most of them once supported.

There is a thudding obviousness to this line if what the Democrats mean is that the Baghdad security plan should stop suicide bombers from entering the green zone. But they don’t mean that. We can surmise from their votes and speeches that had the Kerrys, Reids, and the rest of their party had its way, there would be no Baghdad security plan. They would have at best diminished the number of troops here to those essential for fighting Al Qaeda in the provinces and training the Iraqi military.

The trial-lawyer-turned-senator-turned-presidential-candidate, John Edwards, recently said that, were he president, he would leave only a few Marines to guard our embassy in Baghdad. Senator Clinton has toyed with the idea of withholding funds for training the Iraqi military, an army that when it is trained and equipped will assume the responsibilities of the troops the Democrats want to bring home.

Never mind that one of the reasons a suicide bomber was able to even enter the parliament is that we had handed over security for the building, not to mention the entrance near the parliament to the green zone, to the Iraqis. Never mind that it is hardly logical to judge the failure or success of the Baghdad security plan before all the soldiers have arrived in the surge to Iraq’s capital. And never mind that General Petraeus has already promised to make his own evaluation of our prospects for victory by the end of the summer.

None of these considerations is enough for the leaders of our own legislature. For the Democrats, Iraq is in the throes of a civil war. And it’s strange that proof of this “civil war,” is a Sunni group, Al Qaeda, sending a man strapped with explosives who kills a Sunni lawmaker, Mohammed Awad.

Awad was part of an initiative to bring in more insurgents, like the Sunni Arab tribesmen in the Anbar Salvation Front, into the elected parliament. Was Awad in the middle of a civil war, is he less Iraqi than Al Qaeda in Iraq, an organization whose global leadership resides in Pakistan?

Or for that matter, are the Shiite lawmakers this week who did not budge when Muqtada al Sadr’s ministers walked out of the government, less Iraqi or less Shiite than the ayatollah who is still believed to be in Iran?

The point is that there are plenty of Iraqis who desperately want to defeat those terrorists who seem to target only civilians and not each other. It is inaccurate to say that Baghdad is safe. The fortified Green Zone itself has devolved now into a maze of checkpoints manned by mainly Latin American contractors.

But Iraqis and American soldiers are willing to fight for a future here against an enemy they understand not as a rival religious sect, but as terrorists and saboteurs. Our congressional leaders would have us believe that this violence is inevitable and there is nothing we can do to stop it. They should tell it to the Iraqi legislators who met this weekend in the wake of the bloody attack in the heart of their emerging democracy.