And now Iraq is looking to be another American defeat, and the real question is whether this has been the opening skirmish in a much longer war. The Iraq War and occupation have now lasted longer than World War II, with no obvious end in sight and with hugely destabilizing spillover effects across the whole Middle East. One of the signal merits of the Iraq Study Group report, led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former chairman of the House International Relations Committee Lee Hamilton, is that it understands this wider perspective.

It is not easy to define what this longer war should be called. We know what it is against: Islamic extremism. We know what it is for; to help modernize and with luck to democratize the Middle East countries, to help them establish sustainable social, economic and political systems with the kind of growth that has seen countries like South Korea and Taiwan become mature industrial and high-tech democracies.

To get to the eventual goal from the wretched position in which the United States currently finds itself in Iraq is a very, very long stretch. But the Iraq Study Group has signaled the essential starting point which is the acknowledgement that current policies have failed, that the United States cannot fix this problem on its own, and that the Iraqis themselves and their neighbors are crucial players and stakeholders.

Put to one side the relatively small numbers of al-Qaida militants and non-Iraqis among the insurgents, and consider two essential truths. The first is that there are now four key groups in the Iraqi political mix; the Kurds, the Sunnis and the two rival factions among the Shiites. The first is the SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, whose black turban marks him as a direct descendent of the Prophet Mohammad. During the years of Saddam Hussein's rule, the SCIRI was given sanctuary and support by Iran and one of the main differences between SCIRI and the loose federation of militias who make up Moqtada al-Sadr's so-called Mahdi Army is that Sadr presents himself as an Iraqi nationalist who is suspicious of Iran's ambitions in Iraq and of SCIRI's closeness to Tehran.

That brings us to the second uncomfortable truth. The rivalry between those two dominant forces within the Shiite community is one main reason why the current government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is so ineffective. And the weakness of the Iraqi government underlines the ominous introductory phrase in the ISG report, that progress can only come "if the Iraqi government moves forward with national reconciliation." So far, it has not even been able to impose a truce between the two Shiite factions.

So the ISG's proposal that the United States apply a lot of sticks as well as some carrots to get the Iraqi government to improve its performance looks less than realistic. The report says that "if the Iraqi government does not make substantial progress toward the achievement of the milestones of national reconciliation, security, and governance, the U.S. should reduce its political, military, or economic support for the Iraqi government."

In other words, if the Iraqi government does not do better, U.S. troops will start to leave. The problem is that the Iraqi government, given the ethnic and sectarian divisions and the SCIRI-Sadr rivalries among the Shiites, may not be able to increase its effectiveness since even the police and military units on which it will rely have themselves been thoroughly infiltrated by the militias.

The Group's long-trailed proposal that the United States should "immediately launch a new diplomatic offensive to building an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region" sounds sensible. But in the current state of relations, anyone who thinks that the governments of Iran and Syria (let alone China and Russia) are going to help extricate the United States from this briar patch has probably been smoking something. A frightfully large group of countries is probably feeling a quiet satisfaction that the world's lone superpower and its all-powerful military have been taken down a peg or two.

If Iran and Syria are to help, the price they are likely to demand will be steep. Syria is likely to demand a free hand in Lebanon; Iran is likely to demand a free hand for its nuclear ambitions. And almost every other country in the region will demand that the United States make a much more determined effort to re-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, with the clear understanding that there should be real U.S. financial and political pressure on Israel to make concessions.

The Bush administration will not want to bow to such pressures and may be able to resist them. But it will not long be able to resist the domestic political pressure from a House and Senate controlled by the Democratic Party for the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq to begin. And the ISG report will be a crucial factor in that political confrontation in Washington, for three reasons.

First, the report legitimizes domestic opposition to the war and to the failing occupation. Men of unimpeachable patriotism have said the Iraq mission has gone badly wrong.

Second, the report reflects the political reality that U.S. troops are not going to be staying in Iraq in any great numbers after the next presidential election. So within two years, most of them will have left, and the various factions in and around Iraq now know that. They simply have to wait.

Third, the report is bipartisan, from the veteran Republican James Baker and the highly respected Democrat Lee Hamilton, buttressed by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (among others). This is the American Establishment's report, and now that they have declared they have had enough, the Bush administration will find precious little respectable support if the White House seeks to challenge it.

So the ill-starred Iraqi venture is drawing to an unsuccessful close. But what comes next? Remember that the importance of the defeat at Pearl Harbor was that it led to eventual victory. Pearl Harbor almost did the U.S. Navy a favor, by destroying obsolete battleships and paving the way for the fleets of aircraft carriers that finally won the war in the Pacific.

But there is precious little sign of a similar new technology that will pluck eventual victory from the jaws of the Iraqi defeat. There is even less sign, even in the Baker-Hamilton report, of the bipartisan political will to continue with the wider campaign to modernize the Middle East, nor of any bold new vision of how the war against Islamic extremism may be best waged.

And the worst news of all is that even as the United States starts to wash its hands of Iraq, the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan has turned sour again. There could be more defeats to come, and the victory of a stable, prosperous and democratic Middle East looks very far off.