President Bush's unpopularity in European countries and in Pakistan, a neighboring country to Iraq doesn't seem to be diminishing according to new accounts in Europe where Bush is today.

Our occupation of Japan, as presidential candidate Senator John McCain often refers to, was more peaceful than our presence in Iraq and it didn't involve us in border disputes with other countries. It is possible however to compare our situation with Iran as similar to what we experienced with China when we were in Japan. Eventually it involved us in Korea and Vietnam.

The history of what took place in that part of Asia is more complicated than I can understand or explain even to myself and there are experts that know more about that I ever will.

However, as I try to keep informed as a layman, I see complications stemming from our involvement in Iraq taking us far beyond Iraq itself. Even a more popular president in 2009 may not be able to extricate our troops and our national involvement in this area. McCain does not put it this way, but he'd be pretty hard put to explain as to what we are going to do in this costly situation.

We have a tendency to get ourselves involved in “quicksand” type of situations in various parts of world, where the more we move the more we are drawn into the quicksand.

Of course, pulling out the troops immediately without considering the overall situation may seem only a political slogan but in the end wasn't that what the first president Bush did? Was that a mistake? But how to do it now?

I wouldn't want to be president either now or within the next eight years as things are going to be tough. Do either of the candidates really know how we're going to solve this one, I don't think so.