The final year of President George Bush's second term in office will be dominated politically by arguments over whether the United States should withdraw from Iraq or prolong its military and political presence there. That a foreign policy issue like this should so define his presidency is determined by the narrowing of his domestic options as well as by the inherent difficulty the US faces in Iraq.
In his speech to army veterans in Kansas last week Mr Bush drew daring analogies between Iraq and Vietnam. In doing so he redefined what is at stake in the debate on withdrawal by making a false analogy between east Asia's history during the Cold War and the contemporary Middle East. It is likely to rebound on him.
Mr Bush said it would be devastating to withdraw from Iraq without achieving the military objective of defeating terrorism there and ensuring that the Iraqis are capable of running their own affairs politically. Abandoning the Iraqi people would embolden the US's enemies, so much so that the battle against them would have to be fought at home, where they would triumphally follow retreating troops. Alternatively, a democratic Iraq would inspire freedom elsewhere in the Middle East. Withdrawal in these circumstances would be disastrous and tantamount to defeat. Those who advocate it did so without paying attention to such consequences. Rhetorically it was a powerful speech, but wide open to analytical rebuttal.
Tactically Mr Bush seeks to put his Democratic opponents on the defensive ahead of next month's report from the US chief of staff in Iraq on the military surge there. This is going better lately than many expected, albeit from a low base - a record reflected in improving poll figures for Mr Bush among the US public. Looking ahead to next year's elections, he wants to make it difficult for the Democrats to support withdrawal without appearing unpatriotic. It is an old political game, which is also calculated to undermine Republican congressional sceptics. If successful, it would enable that party to fight the elections on an established programme of domestic and international security against clearly- defined enemies. But it depends crucially on whether political progress is made in Iraq to match the US military effort. There is little evidence that this is so as Iraq's leaders fail to find a consensus on how to share power.
Iraq is a misconceived war of choice without the necessary resources to reconstruct that country or to democratise the Middle East region. It is quite different in both respects from the US occupations of Japan after the second World War and later South Korea. These are false analogies drawn by Mr Bush to bolster a partisan case. By opening up the Vietnam example Mr Bush has risked drawing lessons from a valid analogy which still resonates powerfully in US political life. His opponents and many commentators have pointed out quite correctly that this too was a military quagmire from which there was eventually no option but to withdraw and regroup. Partisan analogies from history risk political rebound.