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Next week, the new Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi will try to cross their own Rubicon. The House will vote on legislation proposed by Pelosi which continues Federal funding for the war in Iraq but require that the troops leave that country by September 1, 2008, two months before the November presidential elections.

The White House has threatened to veto any such bill from the Congress. The Republican minority, knowing what the Democrats have up their sleeves, i.e. nothing less than a Democratic return to the White House next year, sees in this threat a rare opportunity to unify and snatch victory from the jaws of the ignominious defeat they suffered at last year’s mid-term elections.

The early odds are against Pelosi and the Democrats, largely because the Democrats themselves appear divided on the issue. Conservative Democrats think the Pelosi proposal, which is portrayed as specifying a timetable for withdrawal, goes too far. Liberals, on the other hand, think that the proposal does not go far enough.

The liberals oppose any funding for the Iraq war, are appalled by President George W. Bush’s plan to effect a "surge" in the number of US troops — Bush recently ordered 20,000 additional troops into the war effort — and demand immediate withdrawal of all US troops from that country.

Democratic Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the powerful House appropriations military subcommittee, has been heard to declare that the coming vote in the House "is going to start the end of the war." The consensus, however, is that his boast is somewhat premature. In fact, the Democrats face an uphill, possibly losing, battle on Capitol Hill.

The reason, evidently, is that most Americans in the home front equate refusing to fund the Iraq war or setting a definite timetable for withdrawal with failing to support the troops abroad, thus condemning them to being slaughtered by their enemies. This, the pundits say, is a big no-no.

The unintended consequence, they further intone, may well be an upset in the 2008 presidential polls which are all but touted as being the coronation of a Democratic president. This fear and the media characterization of the coming vote as a "major test" of Pelosi’s leadership are the crosses she has to bear.

The numbers are daunting. The Democrats hold 233 seats in the House, the Republicans 201, with one vacancy. Observers on the Hill say this means the Democrats can only afford the loss of 15 votes from their ranks and still obtain the requisite number to pass legislation in the House. Considering what’s at stake i.e. the presidency in 2008, the vote may divide strictly along party lines. Thus, Pelosi needs every vote she can get her hands on.

It’s even a wilder crap-shoot in the Senate, with many Democratic senators not too enthusiastic about having to explain an "unpatriotic" vote when they face voters in their own re-election drives next year. The Senators are considering much tamer legislation which sets a "goal" of March 2008, not a strict timetable, for withdrawal.

The problem of the Democrats is that they won last year’s mid-term elections, and gained majorities, albeit slim ones, in both Houses of the US Congress on a supposed commitment to end the war. That vote was also widely read as a rebuke of Bush’s handling of the frustrating, and arguably fruitless, four-year war. Still, whether conservative or liberal, the voters apparently don’t want their fighting men and women to be placed in greater jeopardy than they already are.

All the presidential candidates, from Hillary Clinton to Rudy Guliani, while wishing for better results in Iraq, routinely pay tribute to their brave soldiers who are sacrificing life and limb in the cause of democracy.

It’s this equation of opposition to funding the Iraq war with abandonment of the soldiers still fighting battles in Iraq which confounds pundits who find no contradiction between calling for withdrawal and patriotism.

Indeed, the pundits plead, largely in vain, that it’s precisely blind adherence to the spurious notion that Bush should be given effective carte blanche to continue the war that’s putting the troops more in harm’s way. Citing the Vietnam experience, the claim is that official woodenheadedness resulted in more deaths and field casualties when all indications were that further involvement in that country was futile. On the other hand, this is a debate that still rages in America today.

If Pelosi’s proposal is rejected, and the conservatives have their way, many are betting that Iraq will become a deepening quagmire for George W. Bush. Much as he would like to avoid it, the conflict that will define his presidency is Iraq, in much the same way the Cuban Missile Crisis is forever connected with John F. Kennedy and Vietnam is inextricably linked with Lyndon Johnson.