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War talk

December 2, 2005 12:50 am

THE LIFE AND LIBERTY of every living American, and millions yet unborn, are bound up with the success of the war in Iraq. That war once may have been optional; winning it isn't. Its anti-insurgent phase may have gone badly; the execution must improve. The war's author, George W. Bush, may in many ways be a poor leader and is, to some, a villainous public figure; an opposition that would ruin him at the cost of the nation is infinitely worse.

Mr. Bush--at long, long last--is correcting one of his key leadership deficiencies, the omission of the American people from a respectful conversation about the war. His address Wednesday at the Naval Academy focused on the training of Iraqi troops and police; more presidential speeches, about other aspects of the conflict, are set. Yes, Mr. Bush's assessment of the Iraqi military and constabulary were overly optimistic, and Americans may rightly wish that he had said more about the long, hard slog ahead to Iraq's effective self-defense from its homegrown and foreign enemies. But even propaganda of the customary wartime variety is preferable to what Mr. Bush has heretofore served up regarding Iraq: a democratically disdainful mix of silence and platitude.

Platitudes are enough for some Americans--the sequacious, the ideological, the fiercely partisan. But over time these citizens do not constitute a majority, and in the American system majorities ultimately make, or unmake, policy. A Gallup poll published the day of Mr. Bush's speech found that Americans by a 54-44 margin disliked the president's handling of the war, and, 55-41, believed he had no plan to win it. Is it any wonder that most citizens have scant confidence in Mr. Bush as commander in chief? Richard Nixon had a "secret plan to end the [Vietnam] war" when he ran for president; George W. Bush--surely the oddest presidential personality since Nixon--has seemed to be keeping his war plan for Iraq secret while governing .

In the absence of honest, or at least hopeful, information, war weariness grows, and why not? Though the horrors of this war fall on relatively few U.S. citizens--soldiers and their families--and on foreigners--innocent Iraqis slain en masse by the worst of the earth; and though deficit spending and even tax cuts (however beneficial to the economy) surreally shield Americans from the staggering costs of keeping half an army in the field--even so, the daily accretion of human suffering with no end in sight, and no visible leadership urging the populace to endure grim news in a good cause, takes its toll on normal sensibility. Americans are not in love with war and death, and only idealism, ably articulated and practiced, makes the relationship bearable.

And not some airy idealism, but the kind embodied by the United States of America--which must survive physically if its spirit of liberty and justice is to survive.

Defeat in Iraq would jeopardize that duality. It would certify the Power of the Bomber--if only he is vicious enough, if only he blows enough limbs and heads off enough frail human bodies--as superior to the Power of Civilization. It would likely create a failed state that would hide and succor every murder-minded fanatic, with visions of American infernos dancing in his head, on three continents. It would be a hammer blow to nascent democratic movements, the only hope for a peaceful and progressive Middle East that no longer exports destruction. It would doom the main model for that change, bleeding but brave Iraq.

Never mind phantom WMDs or sadistic GI guards; never mind Cheney and Haliburton or Bush and his Big Rich affections. This is America's war. At stake is the very nature of mankind's future on an ever-smaller planet. We had better win it.