Barreling Toward Battle

The House and Senate may be rushing toward a barely debated bipartisan resolution that gives congressional backing to President Bush in any war with Iraq. The administration and the House reached an agreement Wednesday on language authorizing a resolution, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) has introduced a resolution identical to the House’s. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), a doubter on Iraq, acknowledged that the resolution is gaining momentum.

If the United Nations does not pass a stiff enough resolution on weapons inspections in Iraq, Bush seems eager to go it alone. Lawmakers who still have questions should not hesitate to raise them, for the sake of public understanding if not in hope of significantly amending the resolution.

Voices of doubt do exist. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle skipped the Rose Garden ceremony at which the president hailed the lawmakers’ support for a resolution, though House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt was at Bush’s side. Daschle has said his aim is to put greater emphasis on eliminating weapons of mass destruction and on ensuring that a war, if it occurs, does not disrupt operations against Al Qaeda. Among Republicans, Sen. Charles Hagel of Nebraska, a decorated Vietnam veteran, has warned that the administration could be headed into a new Vietnam.

The House resolution does tap the brakes on the original White House proposal. It calls upon the president to state that diplomacy has been ineffective and limits the use of U.S. military force to Iraq. It also requires Bush to report to Congress on military actions and reconstruction activities. But the resolution is still quite permissive and skirts the issue of postwar planning for Iraq.

The many undiscussed problems include:

* If a campaign against Iraq were to conclude quickly and successfully, what would come after it? Iraq is a country riven with ethnic conflicts--the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south might seek to split off from Baghdad and create their own countries.

* The dissident groups the Bush administration supports, including the Iraqi National Congress, have spent more time fighting each other than Saddam Hussein. Who knows if new leadership could emerge from within Iraq’s governing classes?

* Iranian hard-liners might use war to grab territory from a longtime enemy on its border. Would that mean U.S. troops along the Iran-Iraq border?

Hussein is a dangerous dictator who has used chemical and biological weapons on his own people. But the White House has not yet provided a persuasive reason why he merits a one-on-one war with the United States, while the rest of the world, Britain possibly excepted, waits on the sidelines.