U.S. Must Lead, Bush Declares : Iraqi Pullout Vow Could End War, Washington Says : State of the Union: We are ‘at a defining hour,’ President says of the gulf conflict. The speech is given amid tight security against possible terrorist attack.

President Bush, delivering his State of the Union address to a nation in the midst of war, called on Americans on Tuesday night to “accept our responsibility to lead the world away from the dark chaos of dictators.”

In the Persian Gulf War, he declared, the United States stands “at a defining hour.”

“Our cause is just. Our cause is moral. Our cause is right,” he declared of the commitment to expel Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. “We are on course. Iraq’s capacity to sustain war is being destroyed. Time will not be Saddam’s salvation.”

Addressing a joint session of the House and Senate girded by unprecedented security measures against a possible terrorist attack, Bush presented a picture of unwavering resolve and determination to carry out what he called “the hard work of freedom”--in prosecuting the war with Iraq, in tackling U.S. domestic problems and in pursuing other U.S. interests around the world.

Seeking once again to leave no doubt about why he sent 500,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen to the Persian Gulf and unleashed the most furious bombardment in the history of warfare, Bush said:

“Saddam Hussein’s unprovoked invasion--his ruthless, systematic rape of a peaceful neighbor--violated everything the community of nations holds dear. The world has said this aggression would not stand--and it will not stand.

“This is the burden of leadership--and the strength that has made America the beacon of freedom in a searching world,” he said. “The cost of closing our eyes to aggression is beyond mankind’s power to imagine.”

As he spoke, police officers formed a cordon around the Capitol and sharpshooters perched on rooftops. The security net, always tight for a presidential visit, was all the more so as a result of fears raised by the Persian Gulf War.

The war dominated the State of the Union address, but the President also raised the hope for a reversal of the suddenly soured United States relationship with the Soviet Union. While restating U.S. concern over Moscow’s violent repression of the secessionist movement in the Baltic republics, he indicated that the Soviet Union may be about to move away from the extreme hard-line tactics that have brought at least 18 deaths so far.

He said the United States had been given representations “which, if fulfilled, would result in the withdrawal of some Soviet forces, a reopening of dialogue with the republics, and a move away from violence.” The assurances came from Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh at a meeting on Monday.

And, given the overriding preoccupation of the war, Bush’s address spelled out an unexpectedly large array of initiatives that his Administration will take in the domestic arena.

Discussing the painful costs of recession, Bush said he understood the plight of those who, as a Massachusetts woman wrote to him, “are hurting badly.”

But he said: “There are reasons to be optimistic about our economy . . . . We will get this recession behind us, and return to growth--soon,” and he predicted that the downturn will be followed by record expansion.

He said the federal budget for fiscal 1992, which he will send to Congress on Monday, will include “a blueprint for a new national highway system,” record levels of federal spending for research and development and “a comprehensive national energy strategy that calls for energy conservation and efficiency” and the advancement of alternative fuels. And, he said, it will do so in a budget that increases less than the rate of inflation.

Bush said the spending plan also will include “a banking reform plan to bring America’s financial system into the 21st Century--so that our banks remain safe and secure and can continue to make job-creating loans for our factories, businesses and home buyers.”

And he indicated that he will again seek a cut in the capital gains tax.

In the wake of the success of the Patriot defense system in intercepting Iraqi missiles in Saudi Arabia and Israel, Bush said he is refocusing the Strategic Defense Initiative to develop a system that would guard against accidental launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles and protect U.S. territory against missiles in the final stages of flight.

This would be a significant trimming of the “Star Wars” program as first envisioned by former President Ronald Reagan in 1983.

Among those in the gallery, seated with First Lady Barbara Bush, were the wives of the two senior military officers leading Operation Desert Storm: Gen. Colin L. Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the Army general in command in Saudi Arabia.

“Halfway around the world, we are engaged in a great struggle in the skies and on the seas and sands,” the President said. “We know why we’re there. We are Americans: part of something larger than ourselves.

“For two centuries, we’ve done the hard work of freedom. And tonight, we lead the world in facing down a threat to decency and humanity,” he said.

“As Americans, we know there are times when we must step forward and accept our responsibility to lead the world away from the dark chaos of dictators, toward the brighter promise of a better day,” Bush said.

“The war in the gulf is not a war we wanted. We worked hard to avoid war,” the President said. “But, time and again, Saddam Hussein flatly rejected the path of diplomacy and peace.”

Bush said the nation’s goal in the Gulf War had not changed: Its purpose, he said, remains Iraq’s departure from Kuwait, restoration of the Kuwaiti government driven into exile Aug. 2 and the stability of the region.

“We do not seek the destruction of Iraq, its culture, or its people,” he said, declaring instead his goal of an Iraq “that uses its great resources not to destroy, not to serve the ambitions of a tyrant, but to build a better life for itself and its neighbors.”

“We seek a Persian Gulf where conflict is no longer the rule, where the strong are neither tempted nor able to intimidate the weak,” Bush said.

Most Americans, he said, “know we had to stop Saddam now, not later. They know this brutal dictator will do anything; will use any weapon; will commit any outrage, no matter how many innocents must suffer.”

In some of his most determined language directed at Hussein, Bush said:

“The world has to wonder what the dictator of Iraq is thinking. If he thinks that by targeting innocent civilians in Israel and Saudi Arabia that he will gain advantage, he is dead wrong. If he thinks that he will advance his cause through tragic and despicable environmental terrorism, he is dead wrong. And if he thinks that by abusing the coalition POWs, he will benefit, he is dead wrong.”

“We will succeed in the gulf. And when we do, the world community will have sent an enduring warning to any dictator or despot, present or future, who contemplates outlaw aggression,” the President said.

To those who question why the United States has assumed the central role in leading the 28-nation assembly of military force in the gulf, Bush said: “Only the United States of America has had both the moral standing and the means to back it up. We are the only nation on this Earth that could assemble the forces of peace.”

“Let future generations understand the burden and the blessings of freedom. Let them say we stood where duty required us to stand,” he declared.

The speech, delivered 13 days to the hour after he told the nation that it was at war, found Bush at the most difficult moments of his presidency and with a particularly difficult task.

As late as Monday, after the speech had gone through several drafts, including some in the President’s hand, White House aides were still debating among themselves over how much the address should focus on the war and how much should be devoted to other matters.

In the end, it was decided that the President had to weave the theme of the war throughout the address, placing the state of the nation in the context of the crisis that has so absorbed its attention and energy.

By this thinking, failure to draw attention to the President’s proposals to deal with the nation’s domestic ills would have left him open to the suggestion that he was so preoccupied with the war that he was failing to recognize the other elements of his job--or that he had no program to address these problems.

In less stressful times, the annual address--which on Tuesday night came at the distant edge of the next presidential campaign--might have been filled more with the rhetoric of the political platform. Tuesday night’s speech, however, took a more muted tone in recognition that the war, not politics, was uppermost in the minds of the President’s audience.

Even as Bush’s public approval ratings have soared as the bombs have fallen, reflecting the support that a President conventionally reaps at the outset of a foreign-policy crisis, support for his handling of the economy, chief among domestic issues, is less than 50%. One of the most recent surveys, Tuesday’s ABC News-Washington Post poll, found Bush at a new high of 79% approval. But, the poll said, only 45% of those surveyed approved of Bush’s work on the economy and 49% disapproved.

Thus, he sprinkled throughout his speech optimistic forecasts for the economy--and the Reagan-like twinkle: “If anyone tells you America’s best days are behind her, they’re looking the wrong way.”

The speech was delivered in the midst of an extraordinary security net, made even tighter than normal out of concern that the presence of the President, Vice President, Cabinet, Congress and diplomatic corps would make the Capitol a particularly rich target for a terrorist.

All streets within a four-block radius of the Capitol were closed to unauthorized traffic several hours before Bush arrived, and the Capitol’s grassy grounds were off limits.

In a televised response to the President, Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), the Senate majority leader, took no issue with Bush’s conduct of the war.

Mitchell, who led the effort in the Senate to give economic sanctions more time to work before resorting to violence, promised that “now that the war has begun, we’ll work to see that it’s swift and decisive, with the least possible loss of life.”

He also urged Bush to “join us in putting our own house in order,” dealing with the domestic problems.