Strengthening the Fainthearts.

• Author: Hillen, John
• Position: Policy in Iraq

WASHINGTON loves to panic over impending snowstorms, ongoing heat waves, the Redskins' playoff chances, and policy implications. The panic has set in on Iraq because American policy there carries enough of a whiff of incoherence about it not only to embolden critics, hut cause formerly stalwart supporters to express doubts. It's one thing when Senator Ted Kennedy or Susan Sontag uses the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to argue for moral equivalence between the Bush Administration and Saddam Hussein's regime. It is another when conservative allies (of all flavors) start deserting President George W. Bush in his moment of need.

They have reasonable concerns. Is the United States attempting to achieve a utopian end with a very limited set of means (with the ties between the two not patently obvious or frequently articulated)? The tactics vary enough to give the impression of convenience (we use agents of the Hussein regime in Fallujah but do the dirty work ourselves in Karbala) rather than well-thought out operational flexibility. The CPA/Pentagon arrangement about who is in charge of what and answers to whom violates the age-old dictate, "if you can't explain the chain of command in ten seconds or less it won't work in a crisis." The only Iraqi ally almost any American can name has just been dropped, and the rest appear incapable of accomplishing much of anything outside their tribe or ethnic group. Finally, the mounting sacrifice incurred in blood and treasure appears to many Americans as if it might be suffered in vain if we fail, run, or soldier on to no certain end.

President Bush's Army War College speech of May 24, 2004, was an important political finger in the dike. While there was very little that was new in the way of policy, and the detailed issues that have bedeviled this occupation were not addressed, it did show him engaged and resolute. Even so, the timing of the speech--coming as it did to choke down the rising panic--seemed determined by media cycles, flustered political allies and the relentless election year polling calendar. Moreover, the Bush Administration has let its supporters flounder and discern on their own where the Administration's ideology ends and the policy begins. Senator Dick Lugar's recent complaint about Iraq policy was not one of reproach and alternative, but confusion.

By responding to these cycles, rather than setting its own, the Bush Administration has let three very important issues become obscured--all of which can be rescued by an appeal to that most durable American political quality: old fashioned horse sense. Americans would rally around the president if the Administration would tone down the utopian...