It has been more than three and a half years since the United States invaded Iraq, and growing American opposition has taken to blaming President Bush and Congress for the "failure" of this war.

However, before this dissent affects the outcome of the Nov. 7 elections, Americans desperately need to re-evaluate where to place this blame.

Before we scapegoat President Bush for the failure of Iraq, it might be helpful to be aware of American expectations of the Iraq War, lest we forget that it was the American public who not only supported this war but did so by an astonishingly large majority.

Prior to the invasion in March 2003, 62 percent of Americans supported the war, but since then, the numbers have effectively flip-flopped as 61 percent of Americans now oppose the war. How could Americans go from being so supportive to so against the war in such short order?

Many are quick to point to the failures of the Bush Administration to establish self-rule and security in Iraq. However, these failures are less the work of an incompetent president and more the embodiment of the unrealistic expectations of the average attention deficient American.

If history is to be our guide for reasonable expectations, then we can look to the examples of democratic development elsewhere, including the United States.

In the United States, it took several years before Americans understood and established democracy in a meaningful fashion. Many colonial states did not agree with the original forms of the constitution and bitterly dissented among each other until establishing a form of a consensus that was as weak as the union itself.

Similar to the situation in Iraq, the British Raj took 200 years to establish democracy in India. Only now have Indians taken steps towards a meaningful democracy, but even this success is bittersweet; riddled with procedural failures, court backlogs, and an inconsistent understanding of equality according to common law standards.

In more recent examples, one need not look further than the endless failures of legal development plans in South America, Africa and, yes, the Middle East. Countless countries fell under the curtain of U.S. and Soviet developmentalists, and the result was no surprise: countless failures.

Rather than referencing these cases of thorny development, American development romantics point to the Marshall Plan as the model of economic and legal development. The reality is that the Marshall Plan spoiled Americans, deluding them into believing that legal and economic development could happen anywhere.

It is no surprise that a country like Germany would develop democracy quickly, since it had it prior to World War II, but in a country like Iraq, we're fooling ourselves.

In Iraq, a country with virtually no history of democracy, secular law, market institutions and freedom from oppression, it's impossible to believe that they "figure it out" in three years.

However, Americans decidedly ignored history when they chose to back this war believing that Americans would be in and out before you could say "Saddam."

If Americans cannot make rational decisions based upon history, then how can we really expect the same of our leaders?

The truth is that we can't. Americans somehow don't realize that war takes time, democracy doesn't happen over night and that any invasion will cost more than lives.

This foolishness makes their initial support of war all the more dangerous. Our cavalier approach toward war is failing our safety, ironically one of the primary reasons we went into Iraq.

The re-evaluation of our expectations of war, and more generally our elected officials, is something of which we are desperately in need. Expecting immediate results from anything is if nothing else an indictment against our attention span.

Legal development can yield great results, but in order to do it, a great amount of effort must be put forth, something that we haven't even come close to realizing.

If we are to believe that war is somehow a magical potion to solve the world's problems, then we had better be ready for the side effects. Because before we can blame the president for his "stay-the-course" rhetoric, we must blame ourselves for allowing him to take that course in the first place.

Robert Phansalkar ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in languages and cultures of Asia and political science.