Making His Case

Just hours after President Bush indicated that he would soon ask Congress to vote on whether to wage war against Iraq, he dispatched one of his best men to make the case. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his way last Wednesday to a secure, windowless room on the top floor of the Capitol, nearly three-quarters of the Senators awaited him. They were confronting one of the gravest decisions lawmakers can face--sending troops into battle--and they expected to see the intelligence Rumsfeld and other Bush Administration officials have said would clinch the case that Saddam Hussein must go, the sooner the better. Instead, they got the kind of riff Rumsfeld uses with the Pentagon press corps. "There are three issues here," the Defense Secretary told them. "There is the issue of what we know. There is the issue of what we don't know. And there is the issue of what we don't know we don't know."

So much for a smoking gun. Rumsfeld's presentation left even stalwarts of the President's party unhappy. "We want to be with you," Oklahoma Senator Don Nickles, the Senate's second-ranking Republican, finally told him. "But you're not giving us enough." The following day, the White House and State Department phoned Senators to assess the damage. Not a fatal setback, they concluded, but the mess in Room S-407 showed that the President will have to work hard to convince Congress and the American public that a war with Iraq is in the national interest. Congress normally gives a popular Commander in Chief what he wants, but Bush has a mountain of skepticism to overcome. As Senate majority leader Tom Daschle put it, "I'm more concerned about getting this done right than getting it done quickly."

This isn't just another military adventure. This would be unlike any other war the nation has waged. Bush & Co. aren't responding to cross-border aggression or an assault on American citizens or interests. To use the President's language, this would be "pre-emptive," launched against a country that has not--yet--attacked the U.S. or its allies.

It's no wonder there isn't a consensus: a recent poll by the Pew Research Center showed that while 64% of Americans supported U.S. military action to oust Saddam Hussein, only 30% would favor going in without allies. In the very week that an anniversary reminds America of the lethal nature of its enemies, is it easier or harder for the President to stand before the United Nations and the American people and defend a plan to continue that war by launching another one? A year after 9/11, does Bush have to prove some connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden, or is it enough that since that day, Americans have the dark imagination to see what an enemy can do to destroy us? With each new speech, each meeting with congressional leaders, each Op-Ed salvo, the Administration is speaking to a curious and conflicted public. Is this war really necessary? Do we have to fight it now? Will we have to fight it alone? And will starting a war have consequences like more terrorist attacks at home and abroad?