Before debating strategy for the war, let’s ask whether it should be fought

The folks in the White House seem to be having a dizzy spell these days. They are trying to convince Americans that the country should invest as many as 200,000 troops and some $20 billion a year to unseat Saddam Hussein.

If they succeed, the war they wage might both defeat Iraq and, depending on how it plays out, substantially harm President Bush’s chance for reelection.

The White House seems to be proceeding on the premise that Americans generally share Bush’s preoccupation--bordering on obsession--with Iraq. Republicans cite opinion polls showing that most voters agree the Hussein regime should be replaced and give Bush high approval ratings. But poll-takers concede this is tricky ground. “Supporting the president” is one thing; enduring a war with significant casualties and huge costs is quite another--particularly during a period of economic upheaval.

There has been a flood of leaks recently in the debate over Iraq. We’ve heard reports (conspicuously lacking in evidence) of a shadowy installation near Baghdad that may be a site for manufacturing biological weapons; other reports have suggested the imminence of Iraq’s nuclear threat.

The leaks grabbing the biggest headlines, though, have been about war plans. One report has it that the project could involve 250,000 troops, $200 billion and 10 years of occupation. Another says it could be done with a relative handful of young Americans in a couple of years--assuming, of course, allies join the effort. There are reports it will be an air war. Or it will be a land war. An urban war. A desert war. But the one message that comes through loud and clear despite the conflicting leaks is this: There will be a war.

Bush continues to insist that no plan to wage war against Iraq has reached his desk, as if the idea of attacking Hussein were just another option floating around in the foreign policy ether. But the fact is that Bush has been championing the idea since he defined Iraq, Iran and North Korea as “the axis of evil” and White House briefers made it clear that an attack on Baghdad would be the first priority in dealing with that axis.

It is a bizarre--wacky might be more accurate--situation: a president of the United States declaring his intention to conduct a war, then trying to rally support from both his constituents at home and his allies abroad.

The latter, even including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, are resisting. Nor have Americans been fully persuaded that there is a clear and present danger from Hussein. Some are so uncharitable as to suspect that Bush’s determination to oust the Iraqi leader is driven by a need to atone for his father’s failure to drive on to Baghdad 11 years ago.

That, of course, is the crux of the matter. Does Bush have the credibility to portray an attack on Iraq as the logical next step in “the war on terrorism”?

At this point, unhappily for Bush, there is no evidence of an Iraqi role in the operations of Osama bin Laden. Nor is there any reason to believe that Hussein is any more threatening than he has been for the last 10 years. Nonetheless, by depicting all the debate within the government as centering on when and how--but not if--the United States is going to attack Baghdad, the Bush administration has created a climate here in which an attack seems inevitable.

Bush himself keeps talking about how the Iraqi people are likely to be so overjoyed at their new freedom that they would turn on Saddam Hussein at the first red glare of a rocket. American presidents always seem infused with such optimism, only to discover that the locals are much less grateful than we had hoped for the bombs that come raining down on them.

In recent weeks, I’ve heard supporters of aggression point to the operation against Grenada in 1983 as evidence that Americans will applaud displays of the national muscle in a good cause. They recall, correctly, that even many liberals were beating their breasts and roaring their approval.

But that military operation was the rough equivalent of conquering Allentown, Pa. The casualties, after all, were largely hapless patients in a mental hospital that was accidentally shelled. The whole Grenada operation lasted less than a week and was carried out in the name of anti-communism--farfetched as that may seem now. Its stated purpose was to “rescue” some American medical students putatively in trouble. It was done without serious risk to our troops. And it was led by a president, Ronald Reagan, who had far more credibility playing John Wayne than his successors. Moreover, as it turned out, many of those who applauded at the time later had second thoughts.

Despite the talk of plans and counter-plans, of this or that model, there is in fact no real debate at all. The Democrats, trotting out their universal approach to all conundrums, have held some Senate hearings. The talk on Capitol Hill centers on what if any strings should be put on the president’s authority to attack Iraq: No one seems to be discussing whether Iraq should be attacked at all.

The Democrats--and the country as a whole--should not be intimidated by uncertain times into accepting Bush’s insistence that we are involved in a full-scale war on terrorism and that going after Iraq is part of that battle. And the president should keep in mind that most Americans go about their lives far more concerned about their jobs than about the axis of evil.