The certainty, resolve and unshakable confidence exhibited last year by Bush's America have since given way to anxiety and fear over steadily deteriorating security situation and rising American casualties in Iraq, notwithstanding a quick military success early this year. The country is in utter chaos and nominally administered by a controversial Iraqi governing council answerable to Paul Bremer, the US 'viceroy' in Iraq. The country was already under the clutch of a tyrant with fundamental rights denied but now it's under alien military occupation with even its sovereignty lost. Saddam's Iraq, to be fair, was efficiently -- even if discriminately -- run giving a taste of solvency, if not affluence to its proud people. Now it's a living hell with no water, electricity or employment and above all no safety to its people. There are for the first time instances of the trafficking of women and children from occupied Iraq. A modern, semi-industrialised Iraq of Saddam era is now pushed to a medieval mould with its vast oil-wealth up for the grab.

With the excuses for the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq proving outright-hoax and the promised democracy nowhere in sight it is to the Iraqis a classical colonial occupation with ulterior motive which is now challenged by a new wave of Iraq's fierce nationalism. Iraq is turning more and more gory with more bloods spilled, more people killed on both sides and increasing misery for the populace. The Americans haunted by the spectre of Vietnam do not have as yet an exit strategy and are preparing for a long haul by pouring in more money, troops and weapons in Iraq's cauldron to fight whom they naively think the al-Qaeda remnants or Saddam's elusive fugitives.

Even if Iraq is now constantly in focus the US' predicaments in Afghanistan where also it scored an early military success are no less acute. Afghanistan is, however, long forgotten by the Americans and the main aim of the military action there -- to take Osama bin Laden dead or alive -- is rarely mentioned now. In the meantime Afghanistan continues to face a precarious situation amid growing tribal factionalism and the failure of the government to extend its writ beyond Kabul. The slow pace of progress in reconstructing the country ravaged by the Soviets, the Afghan themselves in their internal feuds and lastly by the Americans is indeed discouraging. The Talibans fell almost two years ago and the US-installed President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is in office for more than a year. Yet an internal order is still to be restored, constitution drafted, a new national Army raised and preparation of an election undertaken. On the other hand the crime rate has surged seven-fold during the last one year. The tribal warlords who now rule the roost are reportedly running private prisons, bonded labour camps and smuggling rackets. Poppy cultivation has seen an alarming rise and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has so far failed to curb such activities. With the Western donors still withholding their promised money for reconstruction Afghanistan is virtually abandoned and once again destabilised. The resurgence of the Taliban now appears to be only a matter of time.

Bush-Blair exaggeration of intelligence reports to justify war in Iraq has turned into political scandals with the duo's approval ratings plummeting significantly. In Britain, the biggest damper on the government's spirit was Labour's stock defeat in the Brent East by-election. In the US Senator Edward Kennedy has called the Iraq War a "fraud made up in Texas." As the trauma of nine/eleven fades the Americans are again made conscious of the fact that 2000 election installed Bush as a minority President and he unduly enjoyed the bonanza of the windfall of nine/eleven in terms of popularity. As Bill Clinton put in a speech recently, "That election was not a mandate for radical change, but that is what we got. We went from surplus to deficit from a reduction in poverty to an increase in poverty .... Instead of uniting the world we alienated it. And instead of uniting America we divided it by trying to push it too far to the right." Indeed, as the vanquished nations of Bush's pre-emptive war are paying the price of freedom by building up resistance, the US also has started to count the prohibitive cost of occupation.

The fall of either Kabul or Baghdad has the least of sobering effect on the so-called "rogue states." This is another disappointment for the 'pre-emptive' ideologues. Even as the Americans find themselves on the brink of a quagmire, the post war developments have only emboldened the "axis of evil." The North Koreans today are openly defiant; Iran's nuclear programme continues to be active and Syria is once again permitting Hezbollah to use its soil for attacks on Israel. The Bush road map aimed at delivering an imposed Middle East settlement appears to be in shreds. And there is no sign of an emerging democratic transformation elsewhere in the Middle East. For the Americans the whole exercise carried out by them has so far proved to be a zero-sum game.

As Stephen Walt, academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard has aptly advised the Bush Administration to "swallow its pride and get out as quickly as it can before Iraq becomes America's Chechnya" it will require courage to accept the exit strategy. Even if the administration fails to display that courage the American people who are hit hard by Bush's self-imposed mission, would surely step in after a year, if not now, to get out of the Iraq mess.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.