The war in Iraq, which the Republicans in Congress seem to think is over or at least "won," produced its deadliest day of the year Thursday, with at least 80 people killed in two suicide bombings. They apparently were the work of an al-Qaida spin-off bent on capitalizing on the planned pullout of U.S. troops over the summer.

The attacks indicate the withdrawal agreed to by the Iraqi government in Baghdad will be subject to constant review as the level of the violence is gauged both by the government and U.S. commanders in the field. Under the plan, all American combat troops are to be out by the summer of 2010 and the remaining U.S. military personnel gone by the end of 2011.

The transfer of American forces to Afghanistan has already begun as part of President Obama's decision to raise the U.S. contingent there from 38,000 on taking office to nearly 60,000 this summer, with perhaps another 10,000 in the fall. Obama, who in 2004 called the Iraq conflict a "dumb war" and a diversion from the justified one that should have been finished first, has embraced the Afghanistan challenge now.

At the same time, he has recognized that the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and its spread into Pakistan have hugely complicated his task in both places, generating congressional warnings of embarking on "another Iraq" of ill-defined mission.

The image of the Afghanistan of 2009 as a black hole into which the United States is being drawn, with an open-ended future of unwise nation-building, was reflected in the remarks of several leading Democrats in hearings in the last few days.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, concerning her request for supplemental funds for the broadening front: "I'm very concerned that it is going to wind up with us stuck in a problem that nobody knows how to get out of." He said he had "absolutely no confidence in the ability of the existing Pakistan government" to cope with Taliban forces moving in on it.

Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, expressed concern in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that the Obama administration's "strategy regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan does not adequately address the problems we face in Pakistan, and instead has the potential to escalate rather than diminish this threat."

Joining Feingold in pressuring the embattled Pakistani regime to take more aggressive action against the Taliban is Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. As the lone high-level carryover on the Obama team from the departed Bush administration, Gates has proved to be notably supportive in a distinctly non-bombastic manner.

Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, author of "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism" and "The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War," told Feingold that "to the degree that there is a solution ... in Afghanistan, (it) is going to be ... a massive and protracted and tremendously costly exercise in nation-building" that could last 10 or 15 years.

Bacevich suggested the local reaction of U.S. military action in Afghanistan would be similar to what it proved to be in Iraq. "Now we may not believe that we are invading and occupying countries," he said, "but the people on the other end view themselves as being invaded and occupied. ... To some measurable degree, in places like Afghanistan, increased American presence actually increases the dimensions of the problem."

The key question is how liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill, who questioned the wisdom of the Iraq adventure through the Bush years, will go along with more U.S. troop commitments in Afghanistan and what looks to Obey, Feingold and others like still another questionable adventure in nation-building, complicated by the internal turmoil in Pakistan.

Rooting out Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida will continue to enjoy congressional solidarity. Saving Afghanistan in the process will be a harder sell if the task, as in Iraq, similarly drags on.

Reach Jules Witcover at (Unknown address).

Jules Witcover's latest book, on the Nixon-Agnew relationship, "Very Strange Bedfellows," has just been published by Public Affairs Press. Reach him at juleswitcover@earthlink.net.