Where We Stand: The situation in Iraq, and how to go forward.

What the Bush administration most needs in its Iraqi policy is not greater U.N. involvement, or more soldiers, or even an infusion of $87 billion -- but steady nerves. For it is in danger of being panicked into foolish new initiatives by the exaggerated claims and false arguments of a highly unusual coalition of enemies, unreliable allies, ideological opponents of the traditional state system of international relations, appeasement-minded bureaucrats, domestic political rivals, and the growing constituency of anti-American Americans and anti- Western Westerners. And thus far it is not responding to these challenges with firmness, persuasiveness, or indeed any very clear perception of what exactly is at stake. One crucial exception to that criticism must be made: In his September 7 television address, President Bush himself very clearly argued that Iraq is now the central front in the war against terrorism; his administration should heed his words.

The terrorists have made Iraq the main battleground by sneaking into the country, linking up with well-financed Baathist remnants, and embarking on a classic guerrilla-cum-terrorist campaign against Coalition forces and Iraqi patriots cooperating with them. For Islamist and Arab-nationalist terrorists, Iraq is the Spanish Civil War: their opportunity to confront and defeat the main enemy whom their own governments shrink from fighting. They believe, though perhaps with fading certainty, that the U.S. is vulnerable to guerrilla attacks because the American people cannot accept even a moderate number of casualties in foreign wars. That belief happens to be false. As Lawrence Kaplan establishes with a wealth of survey evidence in a recent New Republic article, it is not the people but the elites who shrink from casualties. What ordinary Americans rightly oppose is a war conducted without any clear aim or prospect of victory. And as yet opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans believe the war in Iraq to be just, necessary, and winnable. But the terrorists' faith in America's lack of resolve helps to sustain their campaign.

It was imperative, therefore, that the president firmly declare that whatever the terrorists throw at us, the U.S. will stay in Iraq until the Iraqi people can operate and defend their own democratic government -- which he did, with admirable clarity, on September 7. On less clear- cut issues, however, the administration's case is not being advanced effectively. Let me briskly summarize the arguments of the anti- Coalition coalition.

One: The war is being lost . According to a British Foreign Office document, self-evidently written to be leaked and thus to increase the pressure for U.N. involvement, the Coalition faces "strategic defeat" in Iraq. In the less flamboyant rhetoric of a Washington Post report, Iraq is "engulfed in guerrilla violence." In fact, virtually every reporter who actually travels outside Baghdad points out that most of Iraq is relatively peaceful, serious violence is largely confined to the "Sunni Triangle" between Baghdad and Tikrit, the long-predicted Shiite violence against Coalition forces seems not to have materialized, and the number of Coalition casualties is militarily insignificant. That last sentence will strike many readers, especially those with family members serving in Iraq, as harsh and callous. I appreciate that, and acknowledge that every death is a tragedy for some family somewhere. But the blunt truth is that the U.S. can withstand the death of one soldier a day -- or fewer than 4,000 soldiers a decade -- indefinitely, provided that the American people believe that the deaths are in a decent and winnable cause. And the sooner that fact is generally appreciated, the quicker the terrorists will lose the battle in Iraq and lose heart across the world. If, on the other hand, the U.S. loses heart and scuttles, then Iraq will become the headquarters and training ground for terrorist violence committed not in Iraq against soldiers but in American and West European cities against civilians. Take your choice.

Two: We need more troops on the ground -- and that means troops from currently reluctant allies . Other things being equal, it would naturally be pleasant to have more troops in Iraq. But as several anti- terrorism experts have pointed out, increasing the number of troops is not as important as improving the intelligence those troops are provided. And the intelligence-gathering process is indeed paying off: 39 of the top 55 officials on the playing-card list of senior Saddamites have been arrested or killed. If additional troops are genuinely needed for military reasons, then the U.S. would do well to seek them from those national armed forces that have real military clout and experience in working with U.S. forces -- namely, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and some NATO allies in Europe. Simply adding a bunch of U.N. peacekeepers is likely to complicate and weaken the Coalition effort. Some of those advocating it do so in order to strengthen the U.N.'s claims over Iraq rather than to defeat terrorism more expeditiously.

Three: We need a greater U.N. role in Iraq in order to provide legitimacy for the Coalition . But legitimacy with whom? Not with the terrorists, since -- as the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Iraq amply demonstrated -- the Islamists regard the U.N. as just another instrument of a corrupt and godless West. With the Iraqi people? But they will remember that the U.N. ran a "food for oil" program that benefited the U.N. far more than the Iraqi people. With reluctant allies such as France and Germany? But they favor multilateralism not as means of achieving joint objectives but as a mechanism for frustrating U.S. policy. With the non-governmental organizations that are leaving Iraq in protest at the failure of the Coalition to provide them with security? But, as Martin Peretz has pointed out in the Wall Street Journal , these NGOs remain in far more dangerous situations, such as Liberia, and their withdrawal is basically a political gesture against the Coalition. This is indeed a question of legitimacy: The U.N. and other transnational bodies wish to establish that military intervention is illegitimate and cannot succeed unless it is legitimized by U.N. approval. And this position is covertly endorsed by many Americans in the media, the academy, and politics, because they share this distrust of U.S. power, especially during a Republican administration.

These dubious arguments hold general sway in the public debate, while developments that would tend to support U.S. policy tend to be overlooked. Little attention has been paid to the evidence, outlined by Amir Taheri in the New York Post , that Syria is already responding to the "demonstration effect" of Iraqi freedom by modest steps toward liberalization and the ending of the one-party state. But this merely underscores the need for the U.S. to argue its case better, and to stay the course in Iraq.

Are there then no valid criticisms of administration policy? Certainly there are. The "swagger" element in the Bush foreign policy has been grossly overdone; a firm policy can still be advanced in soothing diplomatic terms. The vulgar undifferentiated attacks on "the Europeans" have distorted the reality of strong support for the U.S. in many European nations and alienated potential supporters across the Continent. At the same time, the failure to develop a serious long-term policy that would prevent France and Germany from conscripting the "New Europe" into an anti-American coalition will weaken the U.S. Nor has the State Department, in its dealings with the U.N., employed public diplomacy to explain why the U.S., as a constitutional democratic government rooted in accountability to the voters, cannot accept the exaggerated claims of transnational organizations, NGOs, and "soft" international law to embody the will of the "international community." And so on.

The U.S. has quietly acquiesced over the years in the construction of a set of transnational rules, practices, and organizations that are hostile in principle to an international system based on nation-states and thus to the U.S. as the single most important state in that system. It is then unreasonably surprised when, in a crisis like Iraq, these transnational forces object to America's pursuing its interests without due deference to the new structures. In thinking about U.S. policymakers, I am reminded of a remark about the Hapsburgs, by my old boss on the Daily Telegraph , Colin Welch: "They always fought in the last ditch. Never in the first."