The Cold Hand of War

By Hugh Sidey

In the grillroom of Washington's Metropolitan Club, a venerable institution once presided over by General William Tecumseh Sherman, the father of modern warfare, the diners grew silent last Wednesday when Secretary of State James Baker appeared on a television screen to declare that his talks with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz had failed.

The cold hand of war was once again claiming the capital. Next day a White House security man spotted a suspicious bundle, and suddenly the iron gates clanged shut. Pennsylvania Avenue and the sidewalks in front of the mansion were swept clear of people and traffic. Police cars, lights flashing, came in coveys until the package was found to be harmless.

Historian William Seale wondered if this was not the first time that the city had been caught up in the drama of a "scheduled war" since 1898. Back then, debate swirled for weeks as Washington matrons in their taffeta ruffles watched from the congressional galleries, and finally the weary William McKinley gave in to the fevered Congress and the U.S. went to war with Spain.

Other students found echoes from 1860, when the North and the South amassed troops and arsenals and the muddy streets of Washington were churned by dashing horses carrying men to desperate meetings -- all in vain -- to stave off the coming apocalypse that some sensed, but most did not.

This time there are fewer illusions and no jaunty warriors or exultant emissaries. Television has brought the world into the galleries and to the White House. The foe is half a globe away, and the destructive forces gathered in the Saudi desert bear no comparisons to the minieball and grapeshot.

Yet some things never change. The men who argue travel in dark limousines, not carriages, but they go over the same routes and to the same places. The agencies that must make war if it comes -- in this age, the Pentagon, chiefly -- are as before swept up in a riptide of dread, a mixture of the pall of death and the exhilaration of using the awesome machine they have designed. The Pentagon last week worked around the clock, its corridors filled with wary brass and eager arms merchants.

Gallows humor, as it has throughout our history, made its comeback. Performer Mark Russell kept his political jokes up-to-the-minute. "Bush said that with the U.N.'s permission the sneak attack on Iraq will begin Jan. 15 . . . Jim Baker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Aziz met in Geneva. Mr. Aziz brought his family, all his belongings and his resumes."

At such times in the past, the floors of the two houses of Congress have become the people's exchange, and it was that way again last weekend for the war-powers debate. No Washington matrons showed up in taffeta, but the galleries were filled with a cross section of Americans, most young, many in uniform.

Down below, the lions stalked one another, plainly sobered by the moment but relishing their time in the spotlight. In the Senate the towering Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York stood in the back row in brown suede shoes to plead his case. Massachusetts' Ted Kennedy, not so long ago a wild political youngster, rose as a silver-haired patriarch. Near him, Iowa's Tom Harkin, popping pills to settle an unruly stomach, his hair a little too long for a true corn-belt troubadour, watched and waited to gather up some of the moment's somber glory. History is made of such things in such times.