US President George W. Bush is enjoying his five-week vacation near Crawford, Texas, while out of his ranch a Californian woman Cindy Sheehan has been keeping a vigil at her makeshift camp to meet with the president. This angry mother, whose son was killed in Iraq last year, asks Bush to pull out immediately and completely from Iraq, to prevent more tragedies for American families.

If Bush truly believes this is a "lofty cause," why not send his two daughters to the front? Cindy asks angrily. She holds that the Iraqi War is an unjust war based on lies. She and her son never understand why the US should send troops to Iraq, nor do they believe Iraq has ever posed immediate threat to their country.

Cindy's anti-war protests attracted wide media attention at home, and herself has become the "Peace Mom." Meanwhile, surveys show that American public support for the war has kept falling: 54 percent of the interviewed said the war is a mistake; 64 percent don't believe the war makes America safer; and 33 percent hold that Washington's Iraq policy would be a failure.

American organizations, governmental, non-governmental or the media, had all been flinching from mentioning the Iraqi War and the Vietnam War in the same breath. But now, more and more people begin to put the two together. In a CNN interview, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said he feels "very uneasy," because factors which once ruined public support during the Vietnam War now have appeared in the Iraqi War. It is just due to domestic split that the US failed to achieve what it believed to deserve during the Vietnam War. Senator Barbara Boxer also saw a shadow of anti-war movements, because no one can see "the light at the end of the tunnel."

Has the desert in Iraq begun to become a "quagmire?" Endless suicide bombings and sectarian quarrels have prevented the US troops from producing a precise timetable of withdrawal. What's more, US casualties rose sharply since August, with the number totaling 1,840. The longer and longer death list weights heavily on American minds, testing their psychological tolerance.

For many Americans, this had once been a war beyond doubt given the fear brought by "September 11" and the "political correctness" of "patriotism." Just as columnist Norman Solomon put it in his new book War Made Easy: From Vietnam to Iraq: "As an astute cliché says, truth is the first casualty of war. But another early casualty is conscience. And for many Americans, the gap between what they believe and what are on their TV sets is the distance between their truer selves and their fearful passivity.... Conscience is not on the military's radar screen, and it's not on our television screen. But government officials and media messages do not define the limits and possibilities of conscience. We do."

A bitter media critic, Solomon holds that before a war the US propaganda machine invariably depicts an enemy as Hitler or an invader, and stresses that all diplomatic means have been used, so that through the media alone people can "predict the next war."

More and more Americans have begun to question this unjustified war, asking what caused their young to lay down their lives. It may be that the administration has special considerations only kept to insiders, or sort of a long-term strategy for an "empire," but apparently the general public is unprepared for paying a price too high. To enjoy conveniences brought by being a super power is one thing, but to support the huge structure of such a power is another.

The US has long cherished a tradition of independence, and now many people, including some army men, have begun to recall what their founder George Washington told them: the country should neither engage in unnecessary foreign interventions, nor keep a military too large in size. In his article, retired lieutenant colonel George Wallace criticized by saying that the top mission of the wide spread US military power is global projection, instead of protecting their country and people. Despite our ability to create giant wealth and our possession of unprecedented military power, he said, it is impossible for us to keep a global empire.

For the Bush administration, the worst may not be criticisms for launching the war, but most people's belief that the war increases significantly the risk of terror attacks on the homeland. "Anti-terror war" has been a "strong point" of Bush, and suspicion over this point is obviously a severe challenge. Although Bush insists on no hurry in pullout, media revealed that the administration has "dramatically cut its objectives in Iraq."

Looking back into the Vietnam War, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said ten years ago: we are not endowed the right to mould other countries into what we believe they should be, but until today, in many places of the world, we are still repeating similar mistakes.

Today the US is caught in a similar dilemma, a situation that tests the wisdom of the Americans.

(People's Daily August 23, 2005)