Pray for peace, prepare for war

WASHINGTON — Happy holidays and oh, by the way, we're going to war with Iraq. Such are the juxtapositions of this holiday season. Secretary of State Colin Powell took us a step closer to that inevitable conflict with his statement Thursday that "we are disappointed, but we are not deceived" by the "flagrant omissions" in Iraq's 12,200-page weapons dossier.

How do you shop for Christmas when it seems likely that there will be bombs over Baghdad by Presidents Day? At a time when America is fixated on Trent Lott's remake of Dead Man Walking, it seems strange that we are poised on the brink of potentially the most dangerous military engagement since the Vietnam War.

Powell's use of phrases such as "material breach" of the recent U.N. resolution on Iraq underlines the folly of wishful thinking about Baghdad's intentions. It is increasingly difficult to cling to the fantasy that Saddam Hussein will have a deathbed conversion and choose survival. As the secretary of State said ominously, "Iraq is well on its way to losing this last chance."

Yes, the ritual will continue of Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, searching for missing anthrax vials, containers of mustard gas and other evidence of hidden arsenal. But as Richard Holbrooke, former ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview Wednesday in New York, "Whatever Hans Blix does, he is a small part of the Kabuki that leads to conflict."

Holbrooke sketched out three scenarios about how the weapons inspections will play out. If Blix fails to uncover anything, America and its allies will soon lose patience with the charade and move towards war. If Blix encounters Iraqi obstruction at a weapons site, that will be justification for military action under the U.N. Security Council resolution. And if Blix locates an Iraqi defector who directs him towards a hidden cache of Saddam's weaponry, that will be the "smoking gun" that the Bush administration needs to rally world opinion in favor of a second Persian Gulf War.

As Holbrooke put it, "Show me a scenario under which war can be avoided — unless Saddam is shot by his own people."

Despite all the earlier hair-trigger rhetoric from Dick Cheney and senior Defense Department officials, the Bush administration is moving with deliberation toward war. Powell was careful not to claim that the fraudulent Iraqi declaration, by itself, was a justification for war. Gone was any hint that America would respond to the slightest Iraqi provocation with guns blazing.

But make no mistake, the time has long passed for any domestic political challenge to war with Iraq. Sure, there will be demonstrations and earnest declarations that "war is not healthy for children and other living things." Yet even skeptics like this columnist have to bow to the grim inevitability of what is to come. War is invariably fraught with ghastly consequences, but no one should labor under the illusion that the Iraqi president is simply a misguided tyrant secretly eager to "give peace a chance."

There are reasons for concern, however, that the American people have not fully faced up to the implications of this coming war. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll this week found that though a majority of Americans support the war, 54% also said they only "somewhat" grasp the Bush administration's policy on Iraq.

It is hard to go to war when the public only somewhat understands the rationale for conflict.

How do you prepare Americans for a war that may prove far more grisly than any recent conflict? Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy Defense secretary, said this week in an interview with The Washington Post, "It would be a terrible mistake for anyone to think that they can predict with confidence what the course of a war is going to be, especially against someone like Saddam Hussein who has chemical and biological weapons."

For three decades, the nation has been spared the horror of thousands of soldiers returning home in body bags. It is certainly possible that our luck will hold, and Saddam will crumble like former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in the face of American air power. But U.S. intelligence officials this week raised the specter in a briefing for reporters that Saddam will burn oil fields and poison water supplies in the face of advancing allied troops. A street-by-street battle in Baghdad could end up resembling the final nightmarish days of World War II in Berlin.

Just as many Americans are not psychologically prepared for the realities of war with Saddam, so too does their government seem unequipped for the aftermath of victory in Iraq. A blue-ribbon foreign-policy memorandum issued this week warned, "The United States may lose the peace, even if it wins the war." The report by the Council on Foreign Relations and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy also cautioned, "The reconstruction of Iraq will be ... difficult, confusing and dangerous for everyone involved."

It must be eerie these days to be sitting in the White House working on George W. Bush's State of the Union address, to be delivered in late January. How challenging to find rhetoric celebrating the painless bounty of more tax cuts and a prescription-drug program while simultaneously bracing the nation for the final conflict with Saddam. But, in a sense, we are all living with this odd dual vision, thinking peaceful thoughts of home and family on the eve of a deadly war.

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