The complexity of the functioning of the American legislature is a marvel to behold and only those who have grappled with it up close, can appreciate the intricacies. The “buying” of marginal Democrat votes to tote the exact number to put through a resolution in the House of Representatives calling for a deadline for withdrawal -- is only one aspect. The legislation must still be reflected in the Senate, probably only to differ so as to have to be compromised in an inter-chamber committee before going to the President’s desk.

One has to surmise many of the more conservative Democrats whose votes were purchased for the foreign policy measure by everything from support for peanut storage subsidies to financing for favored “cultural” projects did so, believing the measure would not survive the House-Senate conference committee. Even if it did, it then would face a veto by the President with no hope of mustering the two-thirds vote to override his veto. So why not take a chance of getting a possible bonus for constituents, pleasing the all-powerful and ruthless Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and still not incur the wrath of those voters who might now or later see it as a betrayal of the American soldieries on the ground in a bitter and bloody contest.

What does a half-mad — is there any other way to describe a “leadership” knowingly sacrificing children in a suicide car bombing — guerilla stalwart make of all this, holed up somewhere in the Iraqi villages or cities, listening to a rather squalidly perverted interpretation by the Arab radios -- or for that matter, even by the BBC and CNN?

With a widely diverse leadership, often at odds with one another on basic ideological issues — if they can be dignified with that term — where does it now set its compass for continuing the struggle? Is it hiding its arms, withdrawing for its version of rest and recuperation, to wait out what President Bush’s opposition promises would be deadlines and withdrawal? Or does it view the whole “debate” in the U.S. as a trick, a subterfuge, a version of the early years of Mohammad’s struggle for a following? After all, these are men who believe virgins await them in Paradise or the long lost iman, the Mahdi, may appear through their efforts to lead all to an Islamic world state.

Yet for the thoughtful Jihadist leaders, as for the American military command, the nature of the outcome of the contest is still a big question mark.

A snapshot of a guerrilla war is always fraught, due to its very nature. There are no orderly lines of held territory on a map with the forces carefully aligned as in conventional warfare. Instead there are the unreliable reports of activities with no strong points held against the enemy.

Surprise is, of course, always an important element in any kind of warfare — and always present. But at times the political judgment of either side can be totally warped, especially in conducting the guerrilla with all its communication difficulties. When, for example, the Kennedy Administration decided to pull the rug from under the Diem regime in Vietnam in 1964 and murder its leader, Hanoi — we know now — was completely taken by surprise. The Communist leadership never expected, not even with all its intelligence tentacles into the South Vietnamese government and military and the American media, its feeds from Moscow and Beijing, Washington would abandon the one nationalist leader with overwhelming recognition and prestige howsoever formidable his critics and opposition.

And so, Hanoi and its guerrillas were unable to take advantage of the chaos in Saigon which follow Diem’s downfall. It took three years for the stolid if persistent Tonkinese to follow their ideological handbook and go — as it turned out unsuccessfully — for “the general; uprising”.. Tet 1968 was in fact a Communist military disaster, wiping out their guerilla forces. But, in one of those quirks so common to history, it was the drama of the attack as presented by the American media which swung American public opinion behind those who wanted withdrawal. Later, of course, with the logistics abandonment of the Saigon regime by Washington, Hanoi launched its final conventional warfare attack.

In Iraq, we are dealing with a completely different phenomenon. These are not ideologues who cut their political teeth on European Marxist texts. They do not take advice, and sometimes orders, from ideological regimes in other Communist capitals [although one could make the case for Tehran’s heavy influence on the Shi’a militants]. And although their tactics have sometimes been brilliant and certainly pragmatic in their flexibility, they hardly have an ideological content at all. To the extent they base them on Islamofascism, it is a vague effort to turn the clock back to a pre-modern world with such varying interpretations; they often result in bloody conflicts among their adherents, the Sunni-Shi’a divide being the most obvious. Ironically, like the perpetrators of 9/11 in the U.S., they turn to ultra-modern instruments — if asymmetrical — for their fighting techniques.

So it is probably much too early to remark on the fall in the level of Jihadists’ attacks in the face of the announcement of President Bush’s “surge” — which, by the way, in sheer numbers is only getting underway — as an obvious strategy to wait out the seemingly growing fervor among the Democrats for setting time limits toward an eventual withdrawal. It could be what we are seeing is the high-water mark of the violence led by infiltration of expert cadre from Sunni areas and support by the Iranian state terrorist apparatus.

But one thing is clear: both in Baghdad-on-the Tigris-Euprahtest and Baghdad-on-the-Potomac, the war still has a long course to run.