George Bush last night tried to redraw the links between Iraq and September 11 in a speech designed to reassure an increasingly sceptical American public about the war in the Middle East.
"The war [on terror] reached our shores on September 11 2001," Mr Bush told a national television audience and 750 soldiers and airmen in dress uniform. "Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war."
Just as Lyndon Johnson conjured the spectre of communism to justify the US presence in Vietnam, Mr Bush is arguing that the US needs to stay the course in Iraq because of the "global war on terror".
There is always a danger in framing conflicts in such grand terms. In Vietnam, the obsession with international communism obscured the nationalistic roots of the war. The communists in north and south were fighting as much for their country as for an international ideology.
By intervening in Iraq (an intervention justified originally on the grounds that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction - which turned out to be non-existent) the US helped create the highly toxic conditions in which the jihadists are thriving.
As a prominent critic of the war, Labour MP Lynne Jones, pointed out today: "What they have ensured, in invading Iraq, is they have actually promoted al-Qaida's involvement in other countries, including Iraq."
Now the US faces a ruthless insurgency that resorts to suicide bombings and other acts of terror. The US then shoehorns that resistance into the global war on terror, which requires the indefinite presence of American troops in a conflict that seems increasingly pointless to the public at home. In his speech, Mr Bush is like a dog chasing its tail.
Mr Bush said he understood the public concerns about a 27-month-old war that has killed more than 1,700 Americans and at least 12,000 Iraqi civilians and cost $200bn (£110.6bn). He said the sacrifice "is worth it and it is vital to the security of our country".
But, as the casualty rate mounts - not just in Iraq but in Afghanistan - there will probably come a point when most Americans will think that the Iraqis need to sort out for themselves what kind of country they want.
Even if Iraq does not end up as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East as Mr Bush envisaged and becomes an authoritarian state like Iran next door, the US will have to learn to put up with it. Just as the US put up with Saddam Hussein for a long time until Mr Bush decided to overthrow him.
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