Facing Reality

By Michael Elliott

Just before 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11--the moment that, two years ago, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center--President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their wives stepped onto the lawn of the White House for a moment of silence. During that long day of remembrance, the President's only public engagement was at St. John's Church on Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House. A year ago, Bush spent 14 hours visiting all three sites of destruction and death--downtown Manhattan, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa. He ended that pilgrimage with a speech at Ellis Island--the Statue of Liberty and the wounded New York City skyline providing a backdrop both poignant and uplifting. This year, by contrast, a White House aide said before Sept. 11, "the message is low key." It could hardly have been lower.

In brief and halting remarks after the service at St. John's, the President remembered those who lost their lives two years ago, and the heroism, decency and compassion shown by Americans on that "sad and terrible day." Sept. 11 is worth remembering for all those reasons and for one other, which is now proving impossible to forget. In his response to the attacks, Bush launched the U.S. on an unprecedented and hugely ambitious campaign to rid the world of terrorism, to remove those regimes that aided terrorists in the past or might do so in the future, and to ensure that weapons of mass destruction do not leach into the hands of terrorists or their sympathizers. But to do that, Bush set out an even grander effort to pacify an arc of crisis running from Marrakesh to Bangladesh. Hence, two wars so far--in Afghanistan and Iraq--plus a concerted U.S. effort to set Israelis and Palestinians on a road map to a peaceful settlement. In the most hopeful version of the Administration's strategy, these objectives come together in a virtuous circle--and peace breaks out all over. Having seen that the U.S. was a "strong horse" in Afghanistan and Iraq, Palestinian radicals would realize--by some process never quite explained--that there is no point continuing to use violence as a way of advancing their political goals.

All this may yet come to pass. The Bush Administration remorselessly reminds anyone who will listen that it never promised a quick and easy consummation of its policies. But it has not come to pass yet, and Bush was forced to reckon last week with the reality of the enormous task he has set himself and to acknowledge that it is messier, more daunting and more complicated than he ever imagined. Bush needs help, and he has admitted as much by calling on the U.N. Security Council to pass a new resolution to encourage the flow of more money and armed forces into Iraq. How he copes with the new reality on the ground and whether he gets the help he seeks will determine the fate of his presidency.

THE BIG PICTURE

For a few weeks, as the anniversary of Sept. 11 approached, the White House was thinking how best to advance the Administration's goals. Aides knew the news from Iraq was unsettling the public, and they knew too that it would take more than a few presidential homilies to calm everyone's nerves. "There was a time," said a White House aide, "when we could just give a speech, and that would take care of an issue. We can't do that now." The new strategy was to "big-picture Iraq" and place the struggle there in the larger context of the global war on terrorism. Bush was pleased with his reception at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on Aug. 26, and it was on that day that the idea of giving a televised speech to the nation began to take shape. So on Sept. 7, after the NFL games, Bush, the go-it-alone ranger, turned reluctant multilateralist. He called on other countries, whatever their "past differences" with the U.S., to step up to their "present duties" in what the Administration likes to call the "central front" in the war on terrorism. "Members of the United Nations," said Bush, "now have the opportunity--and the responsibility--to assume a broader role in assuring that Iraq becomes a free and democratic nation." Bush said he would ask Congress for $87 billion in the current fiscal year for the military and for reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. That breathtaking figure constitutes 11% of the entire discretionary spending in the federal budget.

But the grim reality in the arc of crisis was unchanged by his speech. Two days after the President spoke, suicide bombers from Hamas, the radical Palestinian group, killed 15 Israelis in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Israeli government responded by announcing that it had made a decision to expel Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, from the West Bank. Then al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite-TV channel, showed a videotape of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri--the leader and ideologist, respectively, of al-Qaeda--strolling around a boulder-strewn mountainside with the insouciance of a couple of friends hiking in the Adirondacks, a sobering reminder that those who lead the network responsible for the worst terrorist attacks in history remain at large. On Friday U.S. forces in Iraq were involved in a fire fight at Fallujah in which they killed eight Iraqi policemen, and the same day, two American servicemen died in another battle. "The forces of reality have set in," said Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in what may be the year's finest understatement.

LOOKING FOR LEVERAGE

When it comes to Israel and Palestine, it seems as though the U.S. can do little more than hope for the best. A senior State Department official grimaced last week as he watched TV pictures of Palestinians rallying to Arafat's compound in Ramallah. "Ignoring him is better than making him the center of attention," said the official. There was little the State Department could do. After 2 1/2 years of trying--and failing--to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a glum official admitted, "We have no weight with the Israelis." Yet Sharon still fears the White House, so on Thursday night National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice called a senior Israeli official to try to get Jerusalem to back down from its pledge to eject Arafat. Washington has kept in constant touch with Ahmed Qurei, better known as Abu Ala, appointed Palestinian Prime Minister by Arafat on Sept. 7. A Palestinian official claims that the U.S. has told Abu Ala, "Don't worry, the Israelis won't kick Arafat out."

But if the White House still has some muscle with the Israelis, it has less and less with the Palestinians. Washington pressed Abu Ala to appoint an emergency Cabinet that would take control of the Palestinian security apparatus and crack down on Hamas and other radical groups, but Abu Ala backed down under pressure from Arafat and others. Some in the Administration wondered whether the new Prime Minister was already compromised. "The U.S. has made it pretty clear," says this official, "that we won't support someone who is the voice of Yasser Arafat."

IRAQ: HELP WANTED

In the case of Iraq, the administration is dealing with the new reality by trying to internationalize the task of reconstruction. Inevitably, given the scarcely disguised disdain that some in the Administration have shown for the U.N., the decision to seek a new Security Council resolution was branded a reversal of policy. And inevitably, members of the Administration, who would not admit to error if the Inquisition put them through an auto-da-fe, scoffed at the very idea, stressing their flexibility, reminding skeptics--how could anyone have thought otherwise?--that they have been multilateralists all along. "We've been making course corrections virtually on a weekly basis," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz last week. Surprisingly, given the animosity between Washington and Paris this year, that view is endorsed by a senior French diplomat. "They very pragmatically see that the situation has got to change," this diplomat says, "and they're trying to fix it."

It was plain that Iraq needed fixing months ago. With continued attacks on U.S. troops and mounting pressure to bring them home, the Administration started looking for ways to bring in more foreign soldiers. They first sought to get troops from India, Pakistan and Turkey, among others, into the theater of operations. But since none of these nations would commit without a new Security Council resolution, desultory discussions took place in July on the possibility of a new U.N. mandate. They didn't get very far. Bush left for his vacation in Crawford, Texas, calling for a greater international presence in Iraq but avoided saying whether the U.N. would have more authority there.

It was not until the bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19 that an interagency group in Washington began working on a draft resolution. On Sept. 2, Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Bush to discuss the broad outlines of a proposal that would reinforce an international pledge to Iraq's security and encourage other nations to commit funds to the country's reconstruction. (A donors' conference to rustle up money for Iraq has already been scheduled for Madrid in October.) Powell told Bush that under the terms of the draft resolution, the U.S. would continue to run the military operation in Iraq. "This works," said the President as the meeting ended.

It may--but there's hard pounding to be done before that's certain. Detailed talks started on Saturday, when Powell met in Geneva with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Foreign Ministers of China, Britain, Russia and France--the other permanent members of the Security Council--to discuss a new U.N. mandate for Iraq. At the end of the day's talks, which will be continued this week, Annan said that a consensus was "essential and achievable." But it won't be found on the terms that the U.S. first presented. "With the current resolution," says a senior European diplomat, "you wouldn't get a single new troop contributor or a single new donor to the conference."

The crucial issue is not U.S. command of military forces in Iraq, for no other country is foolish enough to want that burden, but the nature of political control over the reconstruction effort. France, Russia, China and Germany--which is a member of the Security Council but not a permanent one--want a three-stage political timetable. Authority in Iraq would devolve from the Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by U.S. envoy Paul (Jerry) Bremer, to the U.N. and then to the Iraqis themselves. But that would mean the U.S. ditching Bremer, and there's no public sign that the Administration is prepared to do that. "If the French try to argue about taking things away from Jerry Bremer," says a senior State Department official, "that ain't gonna happen."

Though officials like French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin are, as usual, infuriating the Anglo-Saxons with their abstract nouns and high concepts (according to a knowledgeable source, Powell has told Paris, "Stop showing me poetry, and give me your plan"), the French are actually behaving with sweet reason. "The reconstruction of Iraq is a shared duty," De Villepin wrote in Le Monde last week, using Bush's very own formulation. Paris acts as if it is laboring under a decree from President Jacques Chirac that no official must ever, ever be caught saying, "I told you so" to the Americans, no matter how tempting it may be to do so. So there might be room for compromise. One idea likely to be floated: that Bremer remain in place but report both to Washington and to the Security Council. After a while, says a European diplomat, Bremer would be replaced by "an Arab-looking or -sounding gentleman at the helm of this international mission." The Europeans see power then being handed over from the U.N. to the Iraqis themselves in not much more than a few months--an ambitious target and one that Powell plainly thinks is unrealistic.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Even if all the diplomacy comes out right, neither foreign troops nor foreign money is likely to come flooding into Iraq. At their most optimistic, Pentagon planners assume that they can wheedle only another division--say, 15,000 troops--out of other nations, and it's a given that the really dangerous work in Iraq will continue to be done by Americans. As for the cash, Senator Kent Conrad, the senior Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, says the requested $87 billion is predicated on the assumption that $42 billion of reconstruction funds will come from other nations. So far, says Conrad, "they've got $300 million from Canada. Three hundred million dollars is a long way from $42 billion." (Wolfowitz told the Senate last week that "some $2 billion" had been pledged by other nations, which isn't much closer.) U.S. officials bravely say the donors' conference in Madrid will be an opportunity for other countries to shape the whole direction of the Iraqi economy. But so far, this pig has not been perfumed enough for anyone to buy it. "Everyone wants to be [in Madrid] as an observer," says a State Department official. "But they don't want to feel like they'll be left holding the bill."

It's the sheer scale of that bill that is beginning to spook Republicans. "There is consternation among the fiscal conservatives and the moderates over the $87 billion," says a senior House Republican aide. Though Senate majority leader Bill Frist told reporters he was confident that the Administration would get its money, Republicans insist that the Administration has to keep selling its case on the Hill. "It's not enough to send Powell up once a month," says this aide. "The case is going to have to be made repeatedly." And with a measure of supplication. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose arrogant style has long grated on Republicans on the Hill, frequently deferred to other Cabinet members in closed-door meetings last week, which is not his usual style. "Rumsfeld," says a Republican Senator who was at the meetings, was "as docile as a puppy."

That's wise. With nothing going right for the Administration, rumors swirled around the Pentagon that Rumsfeld--or maybe just Wolfowitz or Douglas Feith, the No. 3 in the Department of Defense--was on the way out, which would delight some of the brass. But that's unlikely. If Bush fired any of them, he would be confirming what most of official Washington now believes--that the planning and execution of postwar policy in Iraq has been bungled from the start.

If the jobs of Rumsfeld and his team are safe for now, some Republicans on the Hill are beginning to wonder whether the President's is not. A Senator who talks frequently to the White House says officials there are worried that without visible progress on Iraq, Bush's political credibility will be fatally damaged by next summer. "Once the credibility base is cracked," says this Senator, "it's all over. You can't get re-elected." Hence, he argues, the decision to seek help from other nations. Bush, says this Senator, "needs to share some of the blame for Iraq."

It's nice to think that the French and Germans, the Indians and Turks, might help Bush's political fortunes. But even if they open their wallets, their generosity is not going to score many points with American voters. Iraq and the war on terrorism now define the Bush presidency. There is no money for any popular domestic initiatives. Already some Republicans can be heard muttering that the huge federal budget deficit may make it prudent to delay some of Bush's promised tax cuts. Two years ago, Bush set himself a bold--audacious--set of tasks. How well they turn out will determine how politically strong he is in a year's time. That is the reality for George Bush, and it bites. --Reported by Massimo Calabresi, Matthew Cooper, John F. Dickerson, Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington, James Graff/Paris and Romesh Ratnesar/Jerusalem

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, Matthew Cooper, John F. Dickerson, Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington, James Graff/Paris and Romesh Ratnesar/Jerusalem