Bush is going to war. Yet he still doesn't know how, when, or why

AS recently as January 9 this year, the Independent newspaper in Britain quoted a Pentagon official who stated that, after Afghanistan, the United States would “turn the focus of its anti-terror offensive to countries such as Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines and Indonesia, but not against Iraq”.

Yet within a matter of weeks, President Bush identified Iraq as part of an “axis of evil” and toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein suddenly re-emerged as an urgent international priority.

Such a dramatic turnaround in policy clearly owed little to events in Iraq itself. After all, no links had been established between Iraq and al-Qaida or the terrorist attacks on September 11.

Washington and London have talked up the threat posed by Saddam and warned of dire consequences if pre-emptive action is not taken, yet they have been unable to offer a shred of credible evidence that Iraq is amassing weapons of mass destruction, or represents any threat to the security of the United States and its allies.

Rather, the renewed focus on Iraq was a direct product of the floundering war in Afghanistan. Yes, the US had helped one group of murderous thugs (the Northern Alliance) to overthrow another (the Taliban) and managed to have its own preferred ensemble of warlords installed in Kabul.

But the continued failure to capture Osama bin Laden or any of his leading henchmen, and the complete absence of intelligence as to their possible whereabouts, became embarrassing. The unwillingness to commit large numbers of ground forces, and the hopelessly inadequate intelligence which resulted inevitably in public relations disasters like the bombing of an Afghan wedding party, further sapped morale and undermined enthusiasm for a war that serves no clear purpose or goal. A fresh target was needed, and like his father back in 1991, George W Bush opted to train his sights on Iraq.

But if Bush hoped the prospect of a war against Iraq would rally public opinion, send his personal ratings back into the stratosphere, galvanise the international coalition he effortlessly assembled after September 11 and breathe fresh impetus and vigour back into the war against terrorism, the plan has gone badly astray.

Identifying Iraq as a target was the easy bit. Coming up with a plausible pretext for an invasion has proved a greater challenge. Far from imbuing his administration with a renewed sense of purpose, the spectre of war with Iraq has opened up glaring divisions within the administration itself, the Pentagon and the wider political establishment, and alienated allies in Europe and the Middle East.

The confusion, division and procrastination over Iraq is symptomatic of a growing inability on the part of the US to forge any coherent doctrine or bring any clear sense of mission to its foreign policy.

It enjoys unprecedented levels of global dominance, yet increasingly struggles to provide justifications for the projection of that power onto the international stage.

Widely diverging invasion plans seem to appear on the pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post almost every other day, representing the competing views of rival factions within the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House.

Contrary to the perception in Europe, and despite all the breast-beating rhetoric of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others, there is no great public enthusiasm in the United States for a war against Iraq.

The overwhelming public mood seems to be one of indifference. Even the Washington political élite remains far from convinced about the case for war.

Last week’s Senate hearings were, as the foreign editor of the London Times noted the other day, “comical in presenting a spectacle of the world's only superpower debating in public how best to invade another country, and being unsure”.

Revealingly, it was not just Democrats who expressed reservations. The mood of caution, hesitancy and uncertainty has also infected the ranks of the traditionally hawkish Republican party. Mr Dick Amey, the Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives, said he did not believe an attack on Iraq would be justified without provocation.

“My own view would be to let [Saddam Hussein] bluster, let him rant and rave all he wants,” Amey said. “As long as he behaves himself within his own borders, we should not be addressing any attack or resources against him.”

Other leading Republicans, such as Senator Dick Lugar, warned of the need for the Bush administration to provide a convincing explanation to the American people as to why the Iraqi leader was a threat.

Even Henry Kissinger, a man not renowned for reticence when it comes to bombing impoverished Third World countries, has been urging caution. Troubling the former Secretary of State and foreign policy guru is the thorny issue of how to allow the US the right to take pre-emptive action against regimes it doesn’t like while at the same time denying that right to everybody else.

“It is not in the American national interest,” he wrote in the Washington Post, “to establish pre-emption as a universal principle available to every nation.”

Sensing the distinct lack of enthusiasm for war, Bush has seemed to modify his own rhetoric, promising to be “patient and deliberate” and to “consult with our friends and allies”.

But it is already clear that very few of his friends and allies have any stomach for this particular fight. The Germans have declared their unwillingness to participate in any war against Iraq, while the French are even more reluctant. Saudi Arabia, the main platform for the 1991 war against Iraq, has made it clear that it will not allow US forces to use its territory in any way for a new attack.

One man Bush will always be able to rely on is Tony Blair, but even the British Prime Minister appears to be getting a little edgy. Whereas last month he was talking up Iraq’s nuclear threat, he now seeks to reassure a sceptical public that war against Baghdad “is not imminent and it is not inevitable”. The Daily Telegraph reported that Blair was unsettled by the findings of a focus group survey conducted last month by his pollster, Philip Gould. It is understood he was told that, among British voters, President George W Bush is more unpopular than the Tories.

It all seems far removed from the confident, strident rhetoric we heard in the immediate aftermath of September 11, when Bush declared “a monumental struggle of good versus evil” and warned that rest of the world that “every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”.

Tony Blair echoed the sense of a powerful moral struggle that had to be engaged in and won at all costs, declaring to the Labour Party conference in Brighton last October: “this is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us reorder this world around us”.

We have yet to reach the first anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, yet this sense of crusading moral purpose and resolve seems to have fizzled out already.

It is now the foreign policies of Bush and Blair that are in a state of flux.

The Bush administration, it seems, has already invested too much political capital in effecting a “regime change” in Baghdad to turn back now. Invade it Iraq it must. But as yet, and disturbingly, it still seems unsure about how, when or even why.