Editorial: AT WAR: The Fight Now.(George W. Bush's Iraq policy)(Editorial)

The administration's policy on Iraq, as explained by the president's speech September 7, will change in some important details, while remaining essentially the same.

The continuing theme of Bush's Iraq policy is its context. "Two years ago," Bush said, "I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there and there they must be defeated." This is a snapshot of a world war. We did not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, as John Quincy Adams warned. They came to destroy us. Saddam Hussein was one of many patrons. Now the terrorists -- Baathists and al-Qaeda operatives, formerly sheltering in Iran -- buzz like flies around the corpses of his sons and his state. We must continue to swat them down.

But American policy needs to adjust itself to realities on the ground. Iraq needs money -- lots of it -- for reconstruction, and to sustain our own operations. Bush's price tag of $87 billion is a nice round sum, conveying seriousness and laying the floor for further requests, if they are needed. Nations will go into any amount of debt for necessary projects, so long as they are given a sense of the parameters. The United States will also be seeking "expand[ed] international cooperation in . . . reconstruction and security," as Bush put it. He will be rattling the tin cup abroad, and asking the Security Council for a resolution that could give countries like India the aegis for sending troops. As long as they are under American control, they will be welcome.

Soliciting foreign troops suggests that we do not have enough of our own -- a tender point to the administration. Some reporters argue that what our soldiers do is more important than how many there are: The 101st Airborne in the north and the Marines in the south show the flexibility of light infantry, which the armored divisions holding Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle might emulate. But technique is not ...