ABSURD AS IT seems, the Iraqi president has beaten Bush at the game of diplomacy. With the exception of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush stands alone in his determination to use pre-emptive military force against Iraq. There is so much sentiment against Bush’s proposed action that a Senate Democratic aide mused that it would be “easier for Saddam to get a U.N. resolution authorizing arms inspectors to check U.S. arsenals” than for Bush to get backing from the world body.
That could change as Bush begins his public relations offensive. Top officials have been hinting for months that they possess evidence of Saddam’s evil intentions and that when the time came, Bush would make a public presentation. “He gives a real clear case of why he’s a bad guy and why we will take action and why it’s a moral imperative,” says an aide. “He understands where public opinion is and where it needs to be moved.” Yet Bush allowed the debate over Iraq to get away from him over the summer, and now he is playing catch-up against an extremely wily foe. The strong majorities that supported taking the war to Iraq have evaporated, meanwhile, replaced by widespread ambivalence and, in Bush’s own party, growing antagonism toward unilateral military action.
Winning over the skeptics will take more than blustery language. Bush may have to borrow a page from President John F. Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Kennedy went public with details about what U.S. intelligence had uncovered. He had the country’s full backing as he worked to defuse the threat. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ventured to Capitol Hill this week, he was either unwilling or unable to provide answers about what the administration knows regarding Iraq. “If they’ve got a smoking gun, they are holding it tightly to their chest,” said a Senate aide. “And why would they do that? If they’ve got evidence, you’d think they’d be presenting it at least in a classified setting.”
Bush hasn’t made the case for U.S. armed intervention, much less the costly occupation and rebuilding of Iraq that would inevitably follow. He may not be able to convince anybody outside the circle of hawks in his administration and their camp followers. But that doesn’t matter to Bush. This is a commitment of religious dimensions in the sense that it is based on a belief system about good versus evil and not facts in the traditional sense. Bush’s world view doesn’t permit nation-state complexities to intrude on the moral clarity that he seeks. A former top official who was in a number of meetings with Bush immediately after September 11 was both impressed and disturbed by the way Bush absorbed ideas. “You’d say one thing, and he’d listen, and he’d change his mind to reflect what you said. It was so fast that I almost said, ‘You want to think about this?’ He doesn’t want to labor over anything too long.”
The bill of particulars against Saddam is familiar by now. He used poison gas on his own people; he invaded neighboring Kuwait; he’s pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and he has created chemical and biological weapons. Without in any way defending Saddam-he is a bad man-when the rest of the world examines this list, they don’t see the same bright-line absolutes that Bush sees. Saddam has kept to himself for the past 11 years, and other countries are not as convinced as Bush that Saddam will use weapons of mass destruction on his neighbors and ultimately the United States if he is left in power.
Before 9-11, the administration talked about “smart sanctions” to contain Saddam. What has changed? Bush’s reading of Saddam’s motives, that he means to use these weapons and that he will make common cause with Al Qaeda on the theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Saddam doesn’t need missiles to reach this country; he can place deadly resources here through Al Qaeda. Never mind that Saddam is a secular leader who is not a natural fit for Muslim zealots, Bush has seized on this scenario as justification for a pre- emptive strike.
There are only a few members of Congress with the standing to make the case for continued containment of Saddam, as opposed to launching military action. Chief among them are Democratic Sen. John Kerry, a likely presidential contender in 2004, and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who backed John McCain in 2000 and has been more willing than most anybody in either party to speak his mind about Bush’s bellicosity. A variety of U.N.-sanctioned carrots and sticks have contained Saddam for more than a decade. If Bush could step back from the personal animosity he must feel toward Saddam, who out-maneuvered his father and plotted to assassinate the elder Bush, he might see his way toward averting a military clash. After all, we contained the Soviet Union for half a century; surely we can contain Saddam Hussein.
Bush agreed this week to seek congressional approval. Democrats had been bracing for just such a move, seeing it as an effort to tilt the November playing field toward the Republicans. With everybody talking about war in Iraq, the dinner-table issues that Democrats are pressing get crowded out. It seems unpatriotic to worry about your 401(k) when the country is readying troops for combat. Republicans tend to do better when the debate is about foreign policy and national security. Unless Bush fails miserably in making his case, he should win substantial support from the House and Senate as he goes forward.
These votes are wired. Nobody wants to embarrass a president seeking support for a foreign engagement. If reluctance grows, the resolution will be worded so it is a less sweeping endorsement. But it would be unthinkable for Congress to deny Bush. Analysts cite the 1991 gulf war debate and vote as a model. It was a close vote and several prominent Democrats, including John Kerry and Tom Daschle, voted no. Al Gore agonized until the last moment before he voted yes. Commentator William Kristol worked in the first Bush administration and recalls how they delayed going to Congress for authorization until they had a half million troops amassed in the Persian Gulf. “It was a superficially close vote in ‘91,” Kristol recalls. Turning back was never likely, or even considered. Congress can get a head of steam up once again, but this is Bush’s call, and he seems hellbent on making it, whatever the opposition.
