US AND THEM.(Brief Article)

Last Wednesday morning, one year to the hour after American Airlines Flight 11 rammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, Rudolph Giuliani hunched over a lectern at Ground Zero and began reading the names of the dead in the tolling cadence of a funeral bell: "Gordon M. Aamoth, Jr. . . . Edelmiro Abad . . . Maria Rose Abad . . . Andrew Anthony Abate . . ." For ten minutes the "A"s went on, and the variation of nationality in that memorial list was all-embracing. Men and women from everywhere, it seemed, had made their way to New York, only to become victims of history's worst terrorist atrocity. Two and a half hours later came the conclusion: "Prokopios Paul Zois . . . Joseph J. Zuccala . . . Andrew S. Zucker . . . Igor Zukelman." Two thousand eight hundred and one names, ending with Mr. Zukelman, an immigrant from Ukraine, who had worked as a computer technician on the ninety-seventh floor of the north tower. At the site, the wind whipped up the dust, and a bugler played "Taps." The next morning, President Bush went before the United Nations General Assembly to declare his Administration's intentions toward the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, and to outline his case to a gathering of world leaders who, to one degree or another, have resisted what they see as a headlong rush to war.

One does not have to believe that Bush II is acting out an Oedipal drama with Bush I in order to concede that what is happening now is deeply influenced by both the successes and the failures of the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991. Twelve years ago, Iraq, without provocation, invaded Kuwait and occupied its territory and its oil fields. The Administration of George H. W. Bush, with remarkable focus, immediately began the painstaking work of building a diplomatic and, finally, a military coalition. Drawing together the European nations, the Gulf States, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, persuading the Israelis to hold their fire even as the missiles flew from Iraq to Tel Aviv, setting specific military goals and keeping to them--these were extraordinary diplomatic achievements. The failure came in the endgame. Saddam was allowed to survive.

At the General Assembly, George W. Bush broadly sketched the crimes and treaty violations that Saddam has committed since the signing of the truce with the American-led coalition: the arrest, torture, and execution of dissidents; the harboring of and support for terrorists; the drive to stockpile biological and chemical weapons; and, above all, the unending effort to develop nuclear explosives--all in defiance of specific U.N. resolutions with which Iraq had agreed to comply. Iraq is not the only country on earth that falls into the modern category of "rogue states." But Saddam's record of murderous unpredictability, the scope and ruthlessness of his regional ambitions, and the scale of his wrongs make his a singularly threatening case. "We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather," Mr. Bush said. About that he is right.

The U.N. speech, however, would have been a great deal more effective had it been the climax of a considered campaign of diplomatic mobilization. It was not. Instead, it followed a display of braggadocio and incoherence so scattershot as to amount to fecklessness. There was a mystifying debate-by-leak among Bush Cabinet members, mocking their self-conception as paragons of discretion and self-discipline. There was a lot of belligerent, go-it-alone rhetoric, emanating especially from the offices of the Secretary of Defense and the Vice-President. There were the leaks of war plans to the press. And, most damaging, there were gratuitous expressions of scorn for international opinion and support. The contrast with Bush pere could hardly be starker. The result was to frighten and alienate both the elites and the broader publics of much of the rest of the democratic world, and to ...