One symbol of this change could be seen in the decision of Democratic Senator Russell Feingold to break "with his party leadership last week," as Peter Baker and Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post wrote, "to become the first senator to call for all troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by a specific deadline." On the other end of the political spectrum, Republicans like Senator Hagel and conservatives of many stripes are raising danger flags ever more often -– and in some cases calling directly for us to depart from Iraq. For instance, Andrew Bacevich, who served in Vietnam and is the author of the superb book The New American Militarism, wrote recently in the Washington Post:

"Rather than producing security, our continued massive military presence [in Iraq] has helped fuel continuing violence. Rather than producing liberal democracy, our meddling in Iraqi politics has exacerbated political dysfunction... Wisdom requires that the Bush administration call an end to its misbegotten crusade. While avoiding the appearance of an ignominious dash for the exits, but with all due speed, the United States needs to liquidate its presence in Iraq, placing the onus on Iraqis to decide their fate and creating the space for other regional powers to assist in brokering a political settlement."

Similarly, Donald Devine of the American Conservative Union Foundation, wrote, "The only solution is for the U.S. to exit before the whole thing comes apart."

On Monday, the President, roused from his rounds of vacation bicycling by a ton of bad news and ever worse polling figures, was flown into Salt Lake City to give a speech to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Inside the convention hall, he was received by a friendly audience; while outside, in the streets of a red-state capital, demonstrators including Rocky Anderson, the Democratic mayor of Salt Lake City, gathered to hold the President's feet to the Iraqi fire. The last time a President was so dogged by demonstrators in otherwise friendly settings was certainly in the Vietnam era. ("We are here today," announced Anderson, "to let the world know that even in the reddest of red states, there is enormous concern about the dangerous, irresponsible and deceitful public policies being pursued by President Bush and his administration.") Note, by the way, another sign of the "chickenhawk" nature of this administration: The President not only won't attend funerals or meet with Cindy Sheehan again; he clearly doesn't dare venture into any area where he's likely to meet a challenging reception of any sort. It may, however, already be too late for him to find unchallenging safety anywhere in the United States.

In his stay-the-course VFW speech, you could feel that the President now found himself in a new and confusing situation. Step by step, he's slowly been backing up. This time -- contradicting the anti-Vietnam, no-attention-to-casualties playbook he has long been working off -- he specifically spoke the numbers of dead American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, something of a first for him. Though he never mentioned Cindy Sheehan's name, he might as well have. Its absence acted like a presence, all but ringing from the speech. Read it yourself and you can sense the degree to which he is now uncharacteristically on the defensive. Even to friendly crowds, he finds himself answering questions that, not so long ago, never would have come up. Wherever he is, he is now essentially responding to what is, in effect, an ongoing news conference with the nation in which challenging questions never stop being tossed his way.

All and all, in the last weeks, it's been like watching a nation blinking and slowly emerging from an all-enveloping state of denial. Such a state of mind, once pierced, will be hard indeed for this administration to recreate. In the meantime, the Vietnam template remains stuck in our collective heads. Even the images on the television news -- for instance, the showing of American GIs dragging off the bodies of American casualties under fire as the President calls on the public to stay the course -- have suddenly grown more Vietnam-like.

This is, of course, Vietnam as seen in an Alice-in-Wonderland, crazy-mirror version of itself. For instance, despite what many think, post-invasion opposition to the Iraq war has grown far more quickly than in the Vietnam era; and a mass antiwar movement is now being jump-started into visible existence by the families of soldiers in Iraq (and by small numbers of resisting soldiers too) rather than, as in the Vietnam era, ending on such a movement. Expect the antiwar demonstrations scheduled for Washington on September 24 to be enormous, to feature Cindy Sheehan, and to be led by military families.

It may be that, despite certain visible similarities between the two, Iraq is not Vietnam, as Time magazine editor Tony Karon argued especially eloquently at his blog recently: But in the United States at least, there are certain striking similarities, especially in the unequal burden of pain, suffering, and death laid by enthusiasts of each war on working-class, heartland America. Below, Vietnam historian Chris Appy, whose Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides (now in paperback) is the single best book on the Vietnam experience to appear in years and a distinctly eerie read at present, explores two heartland turning-point moments, involving war casualties in Ohio -- one in 1968, the other now. Tom

Military Families May Once Again Lead Us Out of War
Casualties in the Heartland, 1968/2005
By Christian Appy

"You bet your goddamn dollar I'm bitter. It's people like us who give up our sons for the country," said a firefighter whose son was killed in action. "Let's face it: if you have a lot of money, or if you have the right connections, you don't end up on a firing line over there. I think we ought to win that war or pull out. What the hell else should we do -- sit and bleed ourselves to death, year after year?" His wife jumps in to add, "My husband and I can't help but thinking that our son gave his life for nothing, nothing at all."