Iraq - Autopilot.

The pictures on the news provoked a wave of nostalgia: Colin Powell, George H. W. Bush, and Norman Schwarzkopf in Kuwait, commemorating the tenth anniversary of our liberation of that country from Saddam Hussein. In an age of terrorism and insurgency, it is an increasingly rare thing for one country barefacedly to invade and conquer another. Iraq did it to Kuwait in the summer of 1990; in the winter of 1991 we threw them out.

Now Powell and Schwarzkopf are civilians; George H. W. Bush's son is president, employing Powell as secretary of state. Of the major players, only Saddam Hussein is still where he was.

The first Iraq-related act of the second Bush administration-a bombing of Iraqi sites that was designed, President Bush said, to get Saddam's attention-was an extension of Clinton-era policies, which were themselves an extension of the policies left over from Bush I. Our present Iraq strategy-a "no fly" zone with an embargo-was not intended to be an end in itself. It was meant to weaken and topple the Iraqi regime with a modest nudge, instead of a brutal push. In the chaos following the Gulf War, modest nudges looked as if they might do the trick. But with every passing year, it became clearer that Saddam would endure, and the policy came to be an end in itself. Its ineffectiveness slowly but surely degrades our prestige, even as the busywork of continuously patrolling Iraqi air space (one of those pointless missions that Republicans talked about during the election) degrades our readiness. But the policy stays in place because it is easier to maintain than to change, and because policymakers hope that the eventual collapse of the policy will happen on someone else's watch.

Colin Powell, responding to the tropisms of a secretary of state, has taken the temper of our allies and proposed "smart sanctions," ostensibly focused on Iraqi oil revenues, allowing food and medicine to reach the Iraqi people. (The Iraqi regime, naturally, has eaten well throughout the entire embargo, and gotten the best of medical care, except when terminal ailments have been inflicted by Saddam himself.) The "no fly" zone would continue. Call this Clinton Lite.

Ardent spirits in the Bush camp, such as Paul Wolfowitz, have called for rollback-recognizing a rebel government based in the northern Kurdish enclave and funding it. This would require us to choose among the anti-Saddam politicians, all in their various ways unpleasant and unreliable, and adopting one or several of them as proconsuls. Another option might be called "distant containment"-assuring Saddam (as Israel assures Syria) that unacceptable behaviors, such as developing certain weapons or massing certain troop formations, will provoke immediate, serious retaliation, without a by-your-leave from allies or the U.N. This would require a sustained intelligence effort, with all its attendant possibilities of error, plus a willingness to go it alone in the court of world opinion. Both options involve difficulty and risk.

It should be recalled that the first Bush team (which, like the present one, included Dick Cheney) misread Saddam's intentions and sent him disastrously bad signals, though it responded well to a crisis. If Bush II keeps following the Clinton strategy, more or less watered down, the administration will guarantee itself a crisis down the road.