Into battle

"AT THE TOP," Winston Churchill wrote of wartime leadership, "there are great simplifications. An accepted leader has only to be sure of what it is best to do. . . . If he trips, he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes, they must be covered. If he sleeps, he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good, he must be poleaxed."

When the UN deadline for Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait came and went, and when an additional day of grace came and went in its turn, George Bush decided that it was best to go to war. That decision was the correct one. The prospect of an outlaw state using the plundered oil profits of its former neighbor to fatten its arsenals, while incidentally squeezing the world economy, could not be accepted. Nor could the outlaw be allowed to retire with its honor, its warmaking capability and some of its ill-gotten gains intact-the only possible result, it became clear, of a diplomatic "solution." That left war. It cannot have been a decision that President Bush made with an untroubled heart. He was in combat himself, 45 years ago. He had to bail out of a burning plane, which took two fellow crewmen to their deaths. He knows what General Sherman knew. But when the moment came, he chose a bad war today over a much worse one later.

Over the last five and a half months, NATIONAL REVIEW has given strong support to the President's general approach but raised a number of reservations about specific actions-questioning the wisdom of various diplomatic feelers; taxing the President for not having gone to Congress earlier to get a declaration of war; wondering whether the vast coalition he had stapled together would hinder rather than help him. We stand by these reservations, intellectually. But since all of them (except our criticism of his too-cozy embrace of Syria) were in a hypothetical mode-if this is the direction of his policy, then it will come to grief-we now sweep them, practically, into the desk drawer. Mr. Bush was willing to negotiate, but not to give away the store; he did go to Congress, and his success in winning its approval shows that he picked the right time. Most remarkably, the coalition has held-a testimony, to be sure, to the shared sense of threat, but also to the President's skills at retail diplomacy. His instincts were right, and his vision was clear. He has earned the country's, and the world's, gratitude.

Another "great simplification" of wartime is in the nature of the task at hand. Here, too, in picking the strategy for beating Iraq and driving it out of Kuwait, the Administration looks to be on the right track. The Pentagon opened with its long suit, air power. Iraq, which survived an eight-year bloodbath with Iran, has never experienced anything like this. Its air force was pinned to the ground, or destroyed, while its communications were crippled-essentially demoting its military machine to the level of a World War I force. When Saddam Hussein launched his diversionary Scuds at Israel, America shipped in a supply of the Patriot anti-missile missiles that had been defending Saudi Arabia, and refocused its attention on the key to the situation-weakening the half-million-man infantry force in Kuwait and Basra. The chipper predictions of a days-long conflict, rashly uttered by some congressmen and journalists, soon gave way to the Pentagon's own estimate: that the air phase of the war would last for weeks, on into February. This is a prudent decision. The goal of strategy is always to convert an opponent's strength into a weakness. Iraq's ground forces may be potent, and they are certainly dug in. They are also far from their commander-in-chief, and from their sources of supply. A pummeling by B-52s, with no spare parts and little word from headquarters, is not ideal mental preparation for fighting. The longer they have to bear it, the better for America's "grunts."

One aspect of wartime can never be simplified, for it stretches into the complexities of peace-and that is the question of war aims. One reasonable war aim-the reduction of Iraq's advanced warmaking power-looks as if it has already been achieved. Saddam's gas and nuclear plants are in ruins, and the days of his remaining missile launchers are numbered. A second obvious war aim, declared by Mr. Bush on August 16-the liberation of Kuwait-looks as if it will be accomplished, though perhaps only on the far side of tears and blood. The accomplishment of these two aims will probably bring about a third-the end of Saddam Hussein himself. Few nations, least of all Arab nations, Eke losers. Still, if Saddam does not join his relatives in Mauretania, or his predecessors in an early death, the U.S. and the allies should make his doing so a condition of peace. The torturer of American POWs cannot be allowed to retain even the remnants of power.

Beyond these goals, what of the New World Order? President Bush continues to use the phrase, which, if he means it in a legalistic sense, would be unfortunate, even fatuous. "The mind of American statesmanship," wrote George Kennan, "gropes with unfailing persistence" for "formal criteria of a juridical nature" with which to tidy up the world. The world being what it is, America gropes in vain. This war is not going to establish the rule of law throughout the world, much less in the Middle East. But it may encourage a greater stability among nations.