In the old popular song about the rout by Americans at New Orleans during the War of 1812, the British "ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch 'em." Even allowing for patriotic hyperbole, it can hardly be argued that the British extricated themselves with a great deal of dignity, particularly given that another battle in the same war inspired the American national anthem.

The impact of that defeat on the British national psyche is now obscure, but nearly two centuries later, as the Americans and their British allies seek to extricate themselves from Iraq, the story of how a superpower looks for a dignified way out of a messy and often unpopular foreign conflict has become a historical genre of sorts. As the pressure to leave Iraq increases, that genre is receiving new and urgent attention.

And in the shadow of the bleak and often horrific news emerging from Iraq nearly every day, historians and political experts are finding at least a wan hope in those imperfect historical analogies. Even in the absence of a sudden and dramatic shift on the battlefield toward a definitive victory, there may still be a slight opening, as narrow as the eye of a needle, for the United States to slip through and leave Iraq in the near future in a way that will not be remembered as a national embarrassment.

Most of the recent parallels do not seem to offer much encouragement for a confounded superpower that wants to save face as it cuts its losses and returns home. Among them are the wrenching French pullout from Algeria, the ill-fated French and American adventures in Vietnam, the Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan and the disastrous American interventions in Beirut and Somalia.

Still, there are a few stories of inconclusive wars that left the United States in a more dignified position, including the continuing American presence in South Korea and the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. But even those stand in stark contrast to the happier legacy of total victory during World War II.

The highly qualified optimism of these experts about what may still happen in Iraq - let's call it something just this side of hopelessness - has been born of many factors, including greatly reduced expectations of what might constitute not-defeat there. The United States already appears willing to settle - as if it were in a relationship that had gone sour but cannot quite be resolved by a walk out the door, punctuated with a satisfying slam.

Alongside the dampening of hopes, there has also been a fair amount of historical revisionism regarding the darker tales of conflicts past: a considered sense that if the superpowers had made different decisions, things could have turned out more palatably, and that they still might in Iraq.

Maybe not surprisingly, Vietnam is the focus of some of the most interesting revisionism, including some of it immediately relevant to Iraq, where the intensive effort to train Iraqi security forces to defend their own country closely mirrors the "Vietnamization" program in South Vietnam. If Congress had not voted to kill the financing for South Vietnam and its armed forces in 1975, argues Melvin R. Laird in a heavily read article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Saigon might never have fallen.

"Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975," wrote Mr. Laird, who was President Nixon's defense secretary from 1969 to 1973, when the United States pulled its hundreds of thousands of troops out of Vietnam.

In an interview, Mr. Laird conceded that the American departure from Vietnam was not a pretty sight. "Hell, the pictures of them getting in those helicopters were not good pictures," he said, referring to the chaotic evacuation of the American embassy two years after Vietnamization was complete, and a year after Nixon resigned. But on the basis of his what-if about Vietnam, Mr. Laird does not believe that all is lost in Iraq.

"There is a dignified way out, and I think that's the Iraqization of the forces over there," Mr. Laird said, "and I think we're on the right track on that."

Many analysts have disputed the core of that contention, saying that large swaths of the Iraqi security forces are so inept they may never be capable of defending their country against the insurgents without the American military backing them up. But Mr. Laird is not alone in his revisionist take and its potential application to Iraq.

William Stueck, a history professor at the University of Georgia who has written several books on Korea, calls himself a liberal but says he buys Mr. Laird's basic analysis of what went wrong with Vietnamization.

Korea reveals how easy it is to dismiss the effectiveness of local security forces prematurely, Mr. Stueck said. In 1951, Gen. Matthew Ridgeway felt deep frustration when Chinese offensives broke through parts of the line defended by poorly led South Korean troops.

But by the summer of 1952, with intensive training, the South Koreans were fighting more effectively, Mr. Stueck said. "Now, they needed backup" by Americans, he said. By 1972, he said, South Korean troops were responsible for 70 percent of the front line.

Of course, there are enormous differences between Iraq and Korea. Korean society was not riven by troublesome factions, as Iraq's is, and the United States was defending an existing government rather than trying to create one from scratch.

Another intriguing if imperfect lesson can be found in Algeria, said Matthew Connelly, a Columbia University historian. There, by March 1962, the French had pulled out after 130 years of occupation.

That long colonial occupation, and the million European settlers who lived there before the bloody exodus, are major differences with Iraq, Mr. Connelly noted. But there were also striking parallels: the insurgency, which styled its cause as an international jihad, broke down in civil war once the French pulled out; the French, for their part, said theirs was a fight to protect Western civilization against radical Islam.

Like President Bush in Iraq, President Charles de Gaulle probably thought he could settle Algeria in his favor by military means, Dr. Connelly said. In the short run, that turned out to be a grave miscalculation, as the occupation crumbled under the insurgency's viciousness.

Over the long run, though, history treated de Gaulle kindly for reversing course and agreeing to withdraw, Mr. Connelly said. "De Gaulle loses the war but he wins in the realm of history: he gave Algeria its independence," he said. "How you frame defeat, that can sometimes give you a victory."

The Americans in Beirut and the Soviets in Afghanistan are seen, even in the long view, as cases of superpowers paying the price of blundering into a political and social morass they did not understand.

For the Soviets, that mistake was compounded when America outfitted Afghan rebels with Stinger missiles capable of taking down helicopters, nullifying a key Soviet military superiority. "I don't think they had a fig leaf of any kind," said Henry Rowen, a fellow at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford who was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1989 to 1991. "They just left."

In Beirut, the Americans entered to protect what they considered a legitimate Christian-led government and ended up, much as in Iraq, in the middle of a multipronged civil conflict. In October 1983, a suicide attack killed 241 American servicemen at a Marines barracks, and four months after that, with Muslim militias advancing, President Ronald Reagan ordered the remaining marines withdrawn to ships off the coast, simply saying their mission had changed. The episode has been cited by Vice President Dick Cheney as an example of a withdrawal that encouraged Arab militants to think the United States is weak.

Today, even as expectations for Iraq keep slipping, some measure of victory can still be declared even in a less-than-perfect outcome, said Richard Betts, director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia. For example, he said, an Iraqi government that is authoritarian but not totalitarian might have to do.

The key point, he said, is that under those circumstances, the outcome "doesn't look like a disaster even if it doesn't look good."

Afghanistan held its landmark legislative elections this Sunday. Almost exactly four years after 9/11, and the invasion that followed, Afghanistan will have, for the first time in its history, a democratically elected constitutional government. That is something remarkable, and cause to celebrate - but only in the way that one cheers hopefully during a tough game at halftime.

Everything we know about democracy promotion and post-conflict reconstruction tells us that Afghanistan is far from out of the woods. Even after significant international intervention, many failed states remain unstable, or relapse into conflict and chaos. Remember Haiti? The United States invaded in 1994 and oversaw reconstruction and elections in 1995 and 2000, as international forces slowly withdrew. By 2004, U.S. and United Nations Forces were dispatched to the troubled island again. Haiti is not an outlier. World Bank studies show that countries coming out of civil war are forty percent likely to return to war within five years. It took one horrific hurricane to turn New Orleans to chaos. Imagine the effects of 25 years of war.

One of the main reasons failing countries continue to fail is economic. Economic recovery after war provides one of the best measures of the likelihood of long-term stability. International assistance can play a key role in jump-starting the economy and paying for basic government services, but it can take a generation to return to pre-war standards of living. The problem is that donor countries tend to be most generous in the first few years of the crisis - when local capacity to do something with those funds is limited. And just when the government starts to get on its feet - usually around the four-year mark - the assistance dries up.

The Afghan economy has seen remarkable growth rates over the last four years, but that is only half good. There is a truly free market now in Afghanistan - free from the rule of law. Much of the growth has come from the booming opium trade and other smuggling operations. While a strong economy is necessary to rebuild state and society, a criminal economy will necessarily destroy them both.

Politically, Afghanistan is getting its first taste of real elections - but it is far from being a stable democracy. There were more than 5,000 candidates in the legislative elections this Sunday, violence was relatively low, and turnout decent - all signs that political participation is blossoming. But nobody knows who will run the new parliament, or how it will function. It has no building and no staff. The only other parliament in Afghanistan's history, from 1965 to 1973, is widely blamed for increasing the polarization that led to civil war there. Since armed warlords still dominate many parts of the country, they will undoubtedly be strongly represented in the new legislature. As we have seen in places like Liberia and Serbia, post-conflict elections can produce quite undemocratic leaders.

What does this mean for Afghanistan? First, it means that the next four years will be as important there as the last four. Afghanistan's leaders, elected and otherwise, must put the cause of their nation before their factional, ethnic and venal interests. For our part, the United States and its allies must continue to support Afghanistan, financially and militarily, until it gets out of the danger zone. That means the same level of support for at least another four years.

Second, it means we have to shift our mentality there from short term to long term. If the United States has one overarching goal, it must be to build a legitimate Afghan state that is strong enough to survive and competent enough to deliver results. The Afghan police and legal system remain in shambles. Afghanistan's school system was rated the worst in the world last year by the United Nations Development Program. More international support needs to go to education, training a capable Afghan government, and supporting the rule of law.

Finally, it means something a little more intangible: continued political attention. If Afghanistan falls off the policy agenda in Washington, London and Berlin, the dangers that lurk there will prosper. Lagging reconstruction is already creating support for the ongoing Taliban insurgency. An unchecked opium trade keeps warlord armies well fed.

On this anniversary, we must remember the true cause of those grim attacks four years ago: Bin Laden and Al Qaeda had free reign of a failed state in chaos. We may not be able to find bin Laden, but we know where Afghanistan is located.

Among the growing number of recent cases where international actors have become engaged in trying to rebuild a shattered state and construct democracy after conflict, Iraq is somewhat unique. The state collapsed not as a result of a civil war or internal conflict, but as a result of external military action to overthrow it. We are still very much in the middle of an internationally assisted political reconstruction process in Iraq, and we will not know for a year or two, or maybe five or ten, the outcome of the postwar effort to rebuild the Iraqi state. Nevertheless, some important lessons can be identified.

Prepare For A Major Commitment

Rebuilding a failed state is an extremely expensive and difficult task under any circumstance, and even more so in the wake of violent conflict. Success requires a very substantial commitment of human and financial resources, delivered in a timely and effective fashion, and sustained over an extended period of time, lasting (not necessarily through occupation or trusteeship, but at least through intensive international engagement) for a minimum of five to ten years.

Commit Enough Troops

One of the major problems with the American engagement in Iraq is that there were not enough international troops on the ground in the wake of state collapse to secure the immediate postwar order. As a result, Iraq descended into lawless chaos once Saddam's regime fell. The United States Army wanted a much larger force on the ground in order to secure the postwar order, something like 400,000 troops rather than the total invasion force of less than 200,000 that was ultimately authorized. Of course, what is needed is not simply enough troops but the right kind of troops with the proper rules of engagement. It does no good to have troops on the ground if they simply stand by and watch what is left of the state being stolen and burned. One lesson of Iraq is that international post-conflict stabilization missions need to be able to deploy not just a conventional army but a muscular peace implementation force that is somewhere between a war-making army and a crime-fighting police, between a rapid reaction and riot control force.

Mobilize International Legitimacy and Cooperation

In the contemporary era, a successful effort at post-conflict reconstruction requires broad international legitimacy and cooperation, for at least two key reasons. First, the scope and duration of engagement is typically more than any one country-and public-is willing to bear on its own. The broader the international coalition, the greater the human and financial resources that can be mobilized, and the more likely that the engagement of any participating country can be sustained, as its public sees a sense of shared international commitment and sacrifice. Second, when there is broad international engagement and legitimacy, people within the post-conflict country are less likely to see the intervention as the imperial project of one country or set of countries. All other things being equal, international cooperation and legitimacy tends to generate greater domestic legitimacy-or at least acceptance-for the intervention.

Generate legitimacy and trust within the post-conflict country

No international reconstruction effort can succeed without some degree of acceptance and cooperation-and eventually support and positive engagement-from the people in the post-conflict country. Without some degree of trust in the initial international administration and its intentions, the international intervention can become the target of popular wrath, and will then need to spend most of its military (and administrative) energies defending itself rather than rebuilding the country and its political and social order. Unfortunately, these qualities were lacking in the occupation of Iraq, and the Iraqi people knew it. From the very beginning, the American occupation failed to earn the trust and respect of the Iraqi people. As noted above, it failed in its first and most important obligation as an occupying power-to establish order and public safety. Then it failed to convey early on any clear plan for post-conflict transition.

All international post-conflict interventions to reconstruct a failed state on more democratic foundations confront a fundamental contradiction. Their goal is, in large measure, democracy: popular, representative, and accountable government, in which "the people" are sovereign. But their means are undemocratic: in essence, some form of imperial domination, however temporary and transitional. This requires a balancing of international trusteeship or imperial functions with a distinctly non-imperial attitude and some clear and early specification of an acceptable timetable for the restoration of full sovereignty. As much as possible, the humiliating features of an extended, all-out occupation should be avoided.

Hold Local Elections First

One of the toughest issues on which to generalize concerns the timing of elections. Ill-timed and ill-prepared elections do not produce democracy, or even political stability, after conflict. Instead, they may only enhance the power of actors who mobilize coercion, fear, and prejudice, reviving autocracy and even precipitating large-scale violent strife. In Angola in 1992, in Bosnia in 1996, and in Liberia in 1997, rushed elections set back the prospects for democracy and, in Angola and Liberia, paved the way for renewed civil war. There are therefore compelling reasons, based in logic and in recent historical experience, for deferring national elections until militias have been demobilized, new moderate parties trained and assisted, electoral infrastructure created, and democratic media and ideas generated. International interventions that seek to construct democracy after conflict must balance the tension between domination for democracy and withdrawal through democracy. In these circumstances, two temptations compete: to transform the country, its institutions and values, through an extended and penetrating occupation (à la British colonial rule), and to hold elections and get out as soon as possible. The question is always, in part, how long can international rule be viable? In Iraq, for better or worse, the answer-readily apparent from history, and from the profound and widespread suspicion of American motives in the region and among Iraqis themselves-was: not long.

Disperse Economic Reconstruction Funds and Democratic Assistance As Widely As Possible

Both for the effectiveness and speed of economic revival, and in order to build up local trust and acceptance, there is a compelling need for the decentralization of relief and reconstruction efforts, as well as democratic civic assistance. The more that the international administration, as well as private donors, works with and through local partners, the more likely that their relief and reconstruction efforts will be directed toward the most urgent needs, and the better the prospect for the accumulation of political trust and cooperation with the overall transition project. In Iraq there was a particularly compelling need for the creation of jobs, which might have been done more rapidly by channeling repair and reconstruction contracts more extensively through a wide range of local Iraqi contractors, instead of through the big American mega-corporations.

Proceed With Some Humility

This encompasses perhaps the ultimate, overarching contradiction. It is hard to imagine a bolder, more assertive, and self-confident act than a nation, or a set of nations, or "the international community," intervening to seize effective sovereignty in another nation. There is nothing the least bit humble about it. But ultimately the intervention cannot succeed, and the institutions it establishes cannot be viable, unless there is some sense of participation and ultimately "ownership" on the part of the people in the failed and re-emerging state. This is why holding local elections as early as possible is so important. It is why it is so vital to engage local partners, as extensively as possible, in post-conflict relief and economic reconstruction. And it is why the process of constitution making must be democratic and broadly participatory.

The Presidential election campaign is in the home stretch. Neither the President nor Senator Kerry has secured a decisive advantage.

Iraq is now the central issue of debate, as one would expect, since the war is going badly, and the economy is reasonably robust. The debate is finally beginning to focus on substantive differences between the candidates after a summer in which they mainly exchanged personal attacks on their respective Vietnam records. Their strategies are now clear: Bush will challenge Kerry's steadiness and consistency; Kerry will challenge the necessity of the campaign in Iraq and the competence of the administration's efforts there. But while their diagnoses of the situation differ, their proposals for dealing with what is clearly a mess are not so clearly differentiated. Both propose to seek additional help from members of the international community; both emphasize the need to train and arm Iraqi security forces; and both are hopeful that elections will enhance the legitimacy of Iraqi leaders, fortify their efforts to dry up the insurgency, and allow American forces to be reduced and eventually withdrawn.

Historically, wars have been unkind to presidents on whose watch they occurred. The Korean War reduced Harry Truman's popularity so dramatically by 1952 that he gave up his quest for a second full term. The Vietnam War drove Lyndon Johnson from office, despite impressive domestic achievements. Victory in the Gulf War of 1991 sent George H.W. Bush's approval ratings soaring, but within a year he was defeated by an obscure Arkansas governor.

Yet President Bush still clings to a narrow lead in the polls. Why?

Senator Kerry has argued that the Iraqi campaign is a "war of choice." Perhaps so. But Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war on the United States nearly a decade ago. Whatever the outcome in Iraq, war with Islamic extremists will continue. And American voters remain nearly evenly divided as to whether John Kerry has the steadfast character and consistent judgment they want in a wartime leader.

Uneasiness about the financial and human costs of the war is growing. Casualty figures in Iraq are high compared to the numbers killed or wounded in post-cold war American interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Yet, those earlier conflicts involved humanitarian interventions in which Americans perceived little strategic stake. However, military personnel killed in Iraq - now more than 1000 - still number less than a third of the civilians who perished in New York and Washington on 9/11. And ours is a volunteer military that is highly motivated.

When confronted by an attack, Americans have consistently taken the fight to the enemy, engaging them in combat as far from our shores as possible. The president has portrayed the campaign in Iraq as an integral feature of the war on terrorism. To at least a number of voters, the absence of any terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11 provides evidence that his approach, while not without significant costs, is working.

Victory at the polls may be a dubious prize. Whoever is sworn in on January 20, 2005 will face daunting choices. American options in Iraq range from the "potentially disastrous" to the "extremely distasteful." We cannot simply walk away. And a host of other dilemmas - e.g. nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea, a Middle East peace process that has gotten off track, strains in the trans-Atlantic relations, a multilateral trade round that has lost momentum - demand urgent attention. Beyond this, the next president will be hampered by a gigantic fiscal deficit and a military that is stretched thin. In short, he will have few easy choices. It makes one wonder why politicians yearn for this job.