CASE FOR WAR, REMADE

Nearly three years after the invasion of Iraq, President Bush seemed ready to acknowledge Sunday some of the difficulties his critics have long insisted were present. The president emphatically did not change his mind about the rightness of the cause in Iraq, but dropped the idea of “with us or with the terrorists” and divided his domestic opposition into honest doubters and defeatists.

Given the major mistakes the president now admits to, the honest doubters deserve plenty of credit.

The president elaborated, saying, “I also want to speak to those who did not support my decision to send troops to Iraq; I have heard your disagreement, and I know how deeply it is felt. Yet now there are only two options before our country – victory or defeat.” There are more hidden signals in these lines than the National Security Agency could pick up in a month of warrantless wiretaps.

Mr. Bush empathizes and respects his opposition; he is not out of touch, as has been suggested; he is saying that the past cannot be undone and the United States must deal with the present reality. Then he moves on to unreality: “only two options before our country – victory or defeat.”

The options of victory and defeat come in endless variations, abetted by ever-shifting definitions and the passage of time. What the president is saying is that if U.S. troops are withdrawn now, greater chaos will descend on Iraq and America’s reputation will be shredded, and – unsaid – so will the reputation of his White House.

Those calling for an immediate withdrawal usually agree with the first but argue the chaos will be temporary and possibly kill fewer people than would be killed under the present conditions. The nation’s reputation seems to be of secondary importance to critics. As for the harmed reputation of the Bush White House, critics would be willing to live with it. Gleefully.

President Bush asserted progress in the number of Iraqi forces ready to take the places of U.S. troops, but the number of Iraqi forces and their level of readiness are murky measures after numerous reports of those troops not being as able as the administration previously said, of members of Congress offering contradictory numbers for Iraqi troops and the Pentagon providing still other numbers.

Real progress might be better measured in expanded zones of safety in Iraq: In how many more square miles per month can Iraqi citizens walk freely without fear of being blown up? Or in the case of the Sunni population, captured and tortured?

Sunday’s speech completed two weeks of the president remaking a case for war. And in many respects he was correct: Immediate withdrawal leaves a less stable Iraq in the heart of an unstable region. The massive turnout for last week’s vote suggests the cause of a peaceful Iraq is not hopeless. Whatever the mistakes leading up to this moment – and there have been many – the nation must consider Iraq now, not through the lens of earlier debate about weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, etc.

However, related to this, Congress must pursue the White House decision to wiretap American citizens without court approval. Along with a few of the powers of the Patriot Act, which may now be modified by the Senate, the NSA wiretap program looks like a panicked response to terrorism that exceeded the president’s statutory and constitutional authority.

On foreign policy, the use of torture for interrogation, the war in Iraq and elsewhere, the administration has charged ahead only to find itself pulling back later. The wiretaps are no different, and rather than the president spending part of 2007 giving speeches on how the program turned out to be more complicated and legally dubious than his staff first imagined, he would do well to concede the error now.