With the Iraq war well into its fourth year, the issue is an ongoing debate among Americans, especially as the 2008 presidential campaign heats up. Congress last month tried to set a troop withdrawal timetable, but President Bush balked at the idea, and the country's Iraq policy seems almost at a standstill.

The question is, what comes next?

Hossein Farzin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics who specializes in the Middle East, says a "true and sustainable recovery" of Iraq needs to be based on building democratic institutions from the grass roots.

"This is a long and gradual process that involves a lot of patience by the people of Iraq, policymakers, foreign allies, and the international community as a whole," said Farzin, a former economist and consultant for the World Bank.

He does not believe a military solution exists to end the bloodshed — "nor can it be solely a political one." Rather, peace in Iraq depends on bringing together all aspects of the country's culture, religion, economic, social and political institutions.

Farzin says the international community can best help Iraq by accelerating its economic assistance to the war-torn country. He cautions, however, that trying to impose a Western vision of "democracy" on the Islamic country will not work.

"The emergence and evolution of democratic institutions in Iraq should be an indigenous process with its own unique historical and cultural characteristics," Farzin said.

'Public leading the elite'

Back in America, public support or disapproval of the war is inextricably linked to casualties, said Scott Gartner, associate professor of political science.

"The death of almost 4,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis is seen by the majority of the American public as clearly exceeding the value of any possible gain or objective of the conflict," said Gartner, who wrote the book Strategic Assessment of War and is considered an expert on the impact of casualties on public opinion and U.S. foreign policy.

Gartner says that while expectations for U.S. casualties are low, this should not be taken as a sign that the public is disinterested in events in Iraq. Indeed, America's leadership may be behind the curve when it comes to public opinion on Iraq, he said.

"It seems to me that the public is leading the elite in the anti-war movement," said Gartner, who has conducted research that shows how casualties in particular states played a decisive role in the Republicans losing control of the U.S. Senate in the November 2006 elections.

History shows that as casualties increase in wars, public support for the conflict in question goes down, he said. In wars that start out with popular support, like World War II and Vietnam, that decrease might take years, such as in the case of Vietnam, or not even develop, as in World War II.

"In wars that start off with less enthusiastic support (Korea, Iraq), the decline is rapid and steep," he said.

Larry Berman, a professor of political science and interim director of the UC Davis Washington Program, sees a number of parallels between Iraq and Vietnam.

"Like Vietnam, the war in Iraq has been presented to the American people as an illusion of progress, with administration spokespersons providing the latest evidence that success is just around the corner," said Berman, the author of Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An.

During Vietnam, public opinion eventually turned on "the lies that buttressed" the U.S. foreign policy, and people everywhere witnessed America abandoning millions of "innocent people who it once promised to defend," he said.

This all came to a head in April 1975, when South Vietnam's capital city, Saigon, fell to the North Vietnamese military — "the darkest moment in U.S. history," as Berman described it. And so, he noted, Vietnam is a lesson well worth remembering as America seeks an Iraq exit strategy.

"The U.S. needs to avoid a similar type of retreat in Iraq," Berman said. "Instead, there needs to be a planned, orderly departure program aimed at protecting those who we promised to defend. Leaving these innocents in the middle of a vengeful civil war would be disgraceful."

Murky origins, conspiracies

Other experts say the public is increasingly skeptical of official pronouncements on the Iraq war and its origins. This is true in the case of the infamous claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — used as the primary reason for invading Iraq — weapons that were never found. The public distrust ripples outward from Iraq to the war on terror.

Kathryn Olmsted, a professor of history who is writing a book regarding conspiracy theories about the U.S. government, says that as the administration's deceptions about the Iraq war have been revealed, people have started to question the official versions of many events, especially 9/11.

"Their reasoning is simple," she said. "If the administration lied about Iraq, how can they be trusted to tell the truth about the terrorist attacks or anything else?"

According to Olmstead, by 2006, more than one-third of Americans believed in a dark conspiracy — they thought that either their own government orchestrated the mass murders of 9/11 — or at least knew in advance about the attacks and allowed them to happen.

'Generations to come'

While the immediate question of how to stabilize Iraq dominates the headlines, one lingering, long-term problem remains: the brewing Iraqi refugee crisis.

Keith Watenpaugh, associate professor of modern Islam, human rights and peace, described the Iraq refugee problem as the "worst humanitarian disaster since the end of WW II — and its repercussions will haunt us for generations."

"The Iraqi refugees constitute a volatile addition to already unstable societies. Past refugee crises suggest that most refugees never go home," said Watenpaugh, one of only a handful of American academics to have conducted research in Iraq since the invasion and author of Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism and the Arab Middle Class.

Watenpaugh says refugees typically become increasingly "resented" by people in their "host" countries as they compete for resources, jobs and political power. This bodes ill for the future, as in the case of Palestinian refugees.

"Iraq's refugees will then become the raw material for a new generation of extremists," he said, "angry and intent on violence directed not just against enemies in Iraq and the Middle East, but also against those of us in the West whose actions made them refugees in the first place."