Articulate Our True Cause : Gulf: Bush’s most compelling goal is defense of the ‘new world order’-- principles of peace and international law.

A story in The Times last week should have set off fire bells in the White House.

Under a Saudi Arabia dateline, staff writer Douglas Jehl told of the boredom that has settled over the front-line U.S. troops like a pall of desert heat. But down in the story it became clear that a lot of the Americans Jehl talked to weren’t quite sure why they were there.

Certainly, many men and women in the service said they were wholeheartedly in favor of their mission. And the behavior of troops in this endeavor, as in all wars, is more often defined by the smaller rather than the larger ends.

But in a successful war, should this come to that, morale generated by a clear, well-defined and easily understood sense of purpose is of inestimable value. Henry V could rally his troops with the heart-stirring cry “God for Harry, England and St. George!” That will no longer do, even in England, I suppose, but the situation demands the modern equivalent for the modern American fighting man and woman--and for the citizens at home whose support they must have to succeed.

President Bush defined several objectives in his Sept. 12 address to Congress and the nation. The first four were:

“Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait completely, immediately--and without condition.

“Kuwait’s legitimate government must be restored.

“The security and stability of the Persian Gulf must be assured.

“American citizens abroad must be protected.”

To these he added: “A new world order . . . where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle.”

Then, of course, there was oil: “Vital economic interests are at stake as well.” Iraq has 10% of the world’s oil, Kuwait 20%: “An Iraq permitted to swallow Kuwait would have the economic and military power, as well as the arrogance, to intimidate and coerce its neighbors--neighbors who control the lion’s share of the world’s remaining oil reserves. We cannot permit a resource so vital to be dominated by one so ruthless. And we won’t.”

The President added: “Long after all our troops come home, there will be a lasting role for the United States in assisting the nations of the Persian Gulf. Our role, with others, is to deter future aggression. Our role is to help our friends in their own self-defense. And something else: to curb the proliferation of chemical, biological, ballistic-missile and above all, nuclear technologies.”

Another unspoken objective was the defense of Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states from Iraqi attack. That goal seems to have been accomplished for now. So has, for now, the protection of the rest of the oil. And so has, for now, the stability of the Persian Gulf.

Iraq, though, is deeper than ever in Kuwait, which seems to be disappearing. Americans and people of many other nationalities are still held hostage. Iraq’s war machine is intact.

Following the lead of President Francois Mitterand of France, Bush on Oct. 1 told the U.N. General Assembly that he wanted “a diplomatic outcome”:

” . . . In the aftermath of Iraq’s unconditional departure from Kuwait, I truly believe there may be opportunities for Iraq and Kuwait to settle their differences permanently, for the states of the gulf themselves to build new arrangements for stability and for all the states and the peoples of the region to settle the conflicts that divide the Arabs from Israel.”

That proposal has changed the equation, perhaps profoundly; it is too soon to tell.

It is small wonder, then, that the American troops in Saudi Arabia may be somewhat confused about the broader purposes of their mission. Americans at home, and indeed the rest of the world, may well wonder which way events in the gulf are tending, and to what end.

It seems to me that of the several goals that Bush has announced, the most compelling is the defense of the “new world order”--the common defense of the principles of peace and international law against an outrageous and dangerous aggressor. No American family I have ever known could support the loss of their sons and daughters for cheap oil.

The restoration of the enormously rich Sabah family to its former place of power in Kuwait seems scarcely worth the blood of other nations’ children. Fighting to preserve the accustomed way of life for antique desert monarchies seems a dubious undertaking for this and other modern democracies.

But Bush was surely right when he told Americans that the gulf crisis offers “a rare opportunity to move toward a historic period of cooperation” between nations, “a new era--freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace.”

To focus on the international peace effort--”the new world order”--would provide the moral base for action and the practical hope of attaining it. And it could, in the dread event of war, provide that bedrock of morale without which wars are rarely won.