COLUMN LEFT : Negotiation Is the Path of Courage : Bush’s hard stance may take a staggering, unnecessary toll.

Judged by his public actions--and there has been not the slightest intimation of any differing private diplomacy--President Bush has launched his country on a path of folly and peril.

It was easy to see why he rushed with such eagerness into this vast deployment of national resources. Aside from the gulf crisis itself, the savings and loan scandal was exploding, with First Son Neil Bush a conspicuous part of the political fallout. The economy was sliding into recession, with 10 years’ worth of fiscal imprudence waiting to be exploited by the Democrats. Bush’s own standing in the polls was beginning to plunge.

So the President leaped ahead of the entirely proper and well-handled move to establish U.N. sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s seizure of Kuwait, and hijacked the crisis. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney was sent speeding to Saudi Arabia. He flourished satellite photographs at King Fahd, showing Iraqi tanks rolling toward the Saudi border. But a Pentagon source familiar with Cheney’s materials says the satellite photos vouchsafed the king were slightly out of date. Photographs of more recent vintage revealed that the Iraqi tanks had stopped short of the border and were digging in. There was no indication that Hussein was embarked on an attack on Saudi Arabia.

By this time, however, Bush seemed to be studying no history but the wartime speeches of Churchill and Eisenhower. Twice the number of Marines that landed at Inchon have been dispatched to the region, and staggering loads of supplies freighted eastward.

What has been the consequence thus far? It is not clear how much damage has been done to Iraq, but the economies of the advanced industrial nations are reeling. The West is essentially blockading itself; the soaring price of oil and threat of war are dragging fragile economies down.

An attack by the United States on Iraqi-occupied Kuwait would turn disaster into catastrophe. Refugee Kuwaitis say that Iraqi military engineers have wired dozens of public buildings with explosives. What was not destroyed by U.S. bombs and artillery would be reduced to rubble by the Iraqis themselves. In order to “save” cheap energy, Bush would have smashed any prospect of stable oil prices for a long time to come. The world could slump into long-term economic depression. This is aside from the human toll. Iraq is not Grenada or Panama. Already U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia are suffering from heat prostration. The fine Saudi sand is ruinous to machinery. U.S. carriers dare not venture into the exposed upper gulf. There are the makings of a prolonged and bloody military engagement.

Such are the very obvious consequences of the present U.S. stance, whose aim, as journalists of Bush’s entourage are stressing, is to deal Hussein a punitive and hopefully fatal blow. Any thought of engaging diplomatically with Hussein is shoved aside.

Bush’s strategy is not only profoundly foolish but entirely unnecessary. It has been clear for nearly two weeks that Saddam Hussein is well aware of his miscalculation in grabbing Kuwait and would like a face-saving means of retreat. His own negotiating proposal is that an Iraqi pull-out from Kuwait be linked to other territorial and political conflicts in the Middle East. He was referring to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, as well as to Syria’s occupation of Lebanon.

Even though Secretary of State James A. Baker III seems to have disappeared from view, it cannot be beyond the wit of U.S. diplomacy to demand of Hussein that he immediately withdraw his forces from Kuwait, appending to this demand some generalized language about the possibility of future free elections in Kuwait and a conference on longstanding points at issue in the region. Hussein would jump at the chance to get out of the hole he has landed himself in.

It’s obvious who is alarmed by the prospect of any such conference. At least since 1973, Israel and its supporters in the United States have campaigned against such a conclave. Men such as Henry Kissinger, William Safire and A.M. Rosenthal--all particularly identified with Israel’s interests--are today rabid in their calls for swift military action against Iraq. As a counterweight, conservatives such as Patrick Buchanan have flatly denounced Bush’s strategy as folly. Aside from Zbigniev Brzezinski’s sensible calls for prudence, the old Cold-War liberals have been foursquare for war. A Tonkin Gulf incident is just around the corner.

In these tense days, a courageous course is not to tub-thump for war but to negotiate a settlement and watch the Iraqi tanks roll peaceably back to Baghdad.