Sunday, Nov. 16, 2003

A Few Small Repairs

By J.F.O. McALLISTER

To set the stage for his visit to britain this week, George W. Bush wanted to project an air of relaxed, confident leadership. So on Thursday he invited a gaggle of star U.K. journalists to the Oval Office, showed off the bust of Churchill near his easy chair and praised the Briton ("He was the kind of guy that stood tough when you needed to stand tough"). But the bad news that kept landing on Bush's desk challenged that self-assured image. After a truck bomb in Nasiriyah on Wednesday killed 19 Italians, mostly peacekeeping troops, and 13 Iraqis, South Korea cut its projected troop deployment from 5,000 to 3,000; Japan put its deployment on hold. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin called for the U.S. to relinquish sovereignty to Iraqis right away. "We have to move fast, we can't wait any longer," he said. In Baghdad, the CIA prepared a report concluding that the insurgency was growing along with American unpopularity. On Saturday, two U.S. helicopters crashed in Mosul, killing at least 17, and the U.S. unveiled a new plan to more quickly cede authority to an interim Iraqi government (see following story).

And in London, thousands of citizens of America's closest ally were busy preparing a distinctly frosty welcome — including plans to pull down a papier-mâché statue of Bush in Trafalgar Square, just as U.S. soldiers pulled down a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. French foreign-policy analyst François Heisbourg, who four months ago wanted Europe to send 60,000 troops to Iraq, captured the new, grim mood: "Iraq has gone to hell in a handbasket. Digging a deep hole doesn't put you in a position to ask others to jump into it."

Welcome to Europe, Mr. President. Bush won't be venturing onto the Continent, but the Continent's eyes are trained on him. When Woodrow Wilson, the last President to stay in Buckingham Palace, arrived in 1918, just after World War I, he was greeted in Dover by girls in Stars and Stripes dresses strewing roses at his feet, and in London by ecstatic crowds eager to greet the man trying to make the world safe for democracy. Bush will get a different reception: a projected 60,000 peaceful protesters and 5,000 police officers mobilized to protect him from rioters and terrorists.

Rowland Byass, a 27-year-old garden designer from London, says he'll be there. "I would love to throw an egg at George Bush," he says. "My opposition to him is based on just about everything: the war on terror, the environment, human rights, conservative values I don't subscribe to. But I don't want to get shot by his security guards." Many activists are suspicious that police will use heavy-handed tactics to preserve antiseptic vistas for "Bliar's" best friend, but police officials have emphasized they have no intention of saving Bush the embarrassment of seeing peaceful protest. Security forces may have more trouble with small groups of activists, including some who have been arriving from Europe, using "spontaneous" tactics like lying down in the middle of busy streets to snarl traffic. But whether the TV pictures out of London this week focus on street protest or pomp and circumstance, the crucial business between Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair will be Iraq: somehow getting a grip on the mess into which not long ago they eagerly waded. Only the future of the Middle East, the Atlantic alliance and their own reputations are at stake.

Speaking in his office last week with American reporters, Blair betrayed no anxiety about disorder in his capital, or polls showing that two-thirds of the British disapprove of Bush's foreign policy and 50% think his tight bond with Bush is bad for Britain. Instead, he stuck resolutely to the steely, almost masochistic discipline he has shown since Sept. 11, avoiding all public criticism of Bush except on relatively minor issues like steel tariffs and global warming. That has bought him a loyalty and warmth Bush shows no other foreign leader and secured Britain unmatched influence in Washington.

But Blair always insists he backs the various unpopular fronts of Bush's war on terror because this is Britain's fight, too. "I believe passionately in the cause to which I have committed myself," he said: tackling terror and the "extremism and fanaticism" that breed it. "I think if we had backed away from Iraq it would have been a disastrous thing for the security of my country, never mind the wider world." Whatever the focus groups may be telling him, he exuded confidence that the visit would provide a bully pulpit for convincing people that Bush is not "sitting there just looking for the next place to invade," but is seriously tackling the key security challenge of the 21st century. "I think this is exactly the right time [for him] to come, not just here but also for the message around the rest of Europe," Blair insisted.

But with U.S. officials scrambling to hand back power to Iraqis with a haste they used to insist was impossible — and on a schedule that happens to match the needs of a President seeking re-election — the glitter of dining at Buckingham Palace will have a grim backdrop. This visit was penciled in 18 months ago, but "detailed planning started when it was 'Mission Accomplished,'" says a White House aide, referring to the balmy days when Bush landed on an aircraft carrier to declare victory. "Now they're stuck with it. The world is a far different place."

The terrorists and insurgents in Iraq are good at picking soft targets, and European opinion is certainly one of those. Two days after the Italian police were bombed, nine Portuguese journalists were ambushed by gunmen near Iraq's border with Kuwait as they drove to cover the arrival of 128 Portuguese military policemen sent to help coalition forces. The attack on the reporters (one was wounded, another was kidnapped and later released) provoked a torrent of criticism. "The Americans and the British are responsible for this war," said a caller to a TV program on the war. "Let them fight it."

Across Europe, polls show persistent unease about the occupation. Responding to the attack on the Italian policemen, former Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema, leader of the Left Democrats, the leading opposition party, blasted a "sequence of errors and misguided evaluations" in Iraqi policy. The dilemma is that abandoning Iraq would guarantee its slide into anarchy. Despite his attack on Berlusconi's policy, D'Alema declared that "We cannot ask for the pullout of our contingent." Like many Europeans on the left, his dispute is not about ends but means: he wants to transfer political control from the American proconsul Paul Bremer to a representative empowered by the U.N., after which he would back "a renewal of European involvement." An American diplomat is sure the horror of an even more chaotic Iraq limits how far U.S. and European views can diverge, whatever the suicide bombers may do. "Geography is destiny," he says. "Europe is closer than we are. Failure in Iraq is in no one's interest, least of all those who have been most awkward." By that logic, Bush and the Europeans just have to get along better.

That's already been happening. U.S. officials bristle at the suggestion they have been taking French advice, but the quicker transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis partly tracks what France and Germany (and behind the scenes, Britain) have been advising — though the change of tack has been sparked more by growing chaos on the ground than diplomatic cables. "The Americans are more open to arguments," says a German official. "There is a lot of uncertainty in Washington. On the other side, the Europeans, even those who were against the war, are interested in stability."

In advance of his trip, Bush projected an emollience that signals a newfound desire for friends and influence in what his Defense Secretary once dismissed as "Old Europe." Last week he awarded America's highest civilian decoration to outgoing NATO Secretary-General George Robertson, a Briton, pouring praise on his "legacy of effective multilateralism" — an "ism" that Bush officials have usually employed as a curse word. In his interviews with British journalists, which came complete with a folksy tour of the Oval Office, he made fun of his own verbal gaffes, tried to counter his warmongering image by backing diplomacy for handling Iran and North Korea, and displayed a relaxed attitude toward the development of a European defense force. The agreeable tone of this p.r. offensive was worked out in advance with Blair, whose aides late last week were suggesting helpful fixes to Bush's big speech in London. It will reach to be "visionary," in the words of a White House official, stressing Bush's desire to be tough not only on terrorism but on the causes of terrorism: poverty, ignorance, disease. But instead of Parliament, which Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton had the honor of addressing, Bush's venue is Banqueting House on Whitehall. There the government controls the invitations — wanting no repeat of the heckling Bush took last month in Australia's Parliament.

The mood music aimed at Europe from Washington does appear to be getting slightly sweeter. The Administration has backed, if skeptically, the joint British-French-German initiative to curtail Iran's nuclear program. Working-level cooperation has improved on enhancing NATO and sharing information among law enforcement officials. "There's a thick web of interchange, much of which is not going too badly," says Christopher Makins, president of the Atlantic Council in Washington.

But there are limits. On Iraq, the bottom line for attracting serious European support, both in money and more troops, is a switch to U.N. administration. Bremer has announced a new timetable and procedure for transferring power to Iraqis by next summer, but there's no sign of a bigger U.N. role in that process. Blair himself has been beseeching Bush all year to be more forthcoming on Guantánamo, where nine British citizens are among the prisoners detained as "unlawful combatants" without access to lawyers, facing trial in military tribunals almost universally denounced in Britain as lacking due-process protections. Blair has said that unless their trials can meet minimum standards, he'll insist on their return to Britain — though it's hard to see how the U.S. could permit this without prompting similar demands from other countries. It will dog Blair throughout the summit if this problem isn't solved, but all Bush could reveal to British TV journalist David Frost for an interview shown Sunday was murk: "They will go through a military tribunal at some point in time, which is ... an international court — or in line with international courts." Huh?
What Bush really wants to do this week is make Europe take another look at him. "Very few Europeans have listened to extensive comments from this President," says his communications director Dan Bartlett. "It's usually chopped up into the stereotypical narrative. They are going to see a side of this President they don't know." He'll attend a round table with aids victims, delighted to show off his "compassion" and his government's $15 billion pledge to aids programs in poor countries. He'll meet with the families of British victims of Sept. 11 and of soldiers killed in Iraq. In Blair's northeast constituency of Sedgefield, Bush will chat with the locals at a school and over lunch in a picture-perfect olde English inn.

It will be a intriguing double act, the Tony and George show. "Blair's attitude is, 'Bring it on,'" says an aide. "If you're confident in your argument, you can win, and he always is confident." What Bush lacks in eloquence he will try to make up in projection. The political risk for them both is a bunch of ugly TV pictures of protesters wrecking their party. The risk for Europe and the world is that, however convinced and eloquent they may be, their determination to stick in Iraq does not equate to knowing how to fix it.