The 12 Year Itch

Bush and Cheney are caricatured by Europeans, and not a few Americans, as "cowboys." The president, with his John Wayne "dead or alive" metaphors, and the vice president, with his Gary Cooper terse-but-tough pronouncements, do sound like a couple of sheriffs, telling the bad guys they have 10 minutes to come out of the bar or "we're coming in to get you." On "Meet the Press" last week Cheney actually embraced, as he put it, "the notion that the president is a cowboy." Cheney said: "I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea. I think the fact of the matter is, he cuts to the chase, he is very direct."

Too blunt, it seems, for the requirements of diplomacy. The mishandling of the U.N. vote by the Bush administration, the undercurrent of indifference to international support, may isolate America the Hyperpower for years to come. The swagger of the White House hawks, as well as the bluster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are easy to mock. But it is a mistake to belittle or misunderstand (or, as Bush might say, "misunderestimate") the roots of the Bush administration's determination to go to war.

Bush and Cheney may have trouble articulating (or admitting) it, but they come from a deep and wide tradition of American foreign policy. To understand why America has sent several hundred thousand troops after Saddam and his poisonous weapons, it is essential to grasp the code that Bush and Cheney--and a great many of their countrymen--live by. Americans through much of their history have been uninterested in world affairs. But if their honor and security are threatened, most Americans have been more than willing to use force, and plenty of it, to defend themselves. Op-ed writers may not regard Iraq as an immediate threat, and they may wring their hands about the Bush administration's failure of diplomacy, but most Americans--by a 2-to-1 margin, according to the latest Gallup poll--were willing to go to war to get rid of the Iraqi strongman, with or without the United Nations.

Americans are peace-loving and at times isolationist, but they can also be violent and warlike. As historian Walter Russell Mead points out, "Since the Vietnam War, taken by some as opening a new era of reluctance in the exercise of military power, the United States has deployed combat forces in, or used deadly force over, Cambodia, Iran, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, the South China Sea, Liberia, Macedonia, Albania and Yugoslavia. This is a record that no other country comes close to matching."

Politicians, notes Mead, usually don't get into trouble for using too much force; they are punished by the voters for using too little. The Korean and Vietnam wars lost public support in part because American leaders were unwilling to go all-out to win those wars. President George H.W. Bush was not unpopular for sending ground troops into Kuwait, but as time went on he was blamed for not finishing the job by marching to Baghdad and knocking off Saddam.

These lessons are not lost on George W. Bush, who may not read as much as Dick Cheney but who has an instinctive feel for popular values and attitudes. Bush is not going to war to win votes, but he knows that a war is not politically unpopular. It is simplistic, and probably wrong, to say that George Bush the Son is going to war to accomplish what his father could not. Neither psychology nor politics adequately explains Bush's unwavering resolve to remove Saddam from power. Rather, the president is in the mainstream of a deep and mighty American river, a slow and reluctant but overwhelming desire to fight when Americans feel that their lives and freedom are in danger. The threat from Saddam may not have been immediately obvious to many Americans, but a clear majority has taken Bush at his word that Saddam must be removed for the safety of America's "skies and cities," as Bush has put it.