Analysis: A firm call to arms

Friday, Sept. 21, 2001 | 5:24 a.m.

R.W. Apple Jr. writes for the New York Times.

Some in the administration would prefer to focus the campaign more narrowly, concentrating on the operations of Osama bin Laden, the main suspect in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11. That, they argue, would constitute a much more realistic goal -- though still a hard one to achieve -- and make easier the assembly of an extensive, actively engaged international coalition.

"Freedom and fear are at war," Bush said, but he refrained from talking about World War III, perhaps because many Europeans are made uneasy by too much war talk. They would prefer to define what lies ahead as an international police action.

It was a solemn moment, fraught with drama and charged with history. What flows from it will go some distance toward defining the still young and largely untried Bush administration and may profoundly affect the nation's future.

Tremendous public support for the president was reflected in the warmth of the reception he received on Capitol Hill. Bush rose to the occasion, finding at times the eloquence that has eluded him so often in the past.

But he must still find a way to satisfy the desire of many Americans for a dramatic early retaliation while keeping apprehensive European and Middle Eastern allies on board.

Thursday night's address was Bush's second major speech since the attacks; the first, almost pastoral in tone, was delivered at the Washington National Cathedral last week. By appearing on Capitol Hill to spell out his intentions in slightly greater detail, the president was following hallowed American tradition.

The first president to speak before a joint session of Congress was John Adams. The place was Philadelphia. The date was May 16, 1797. The subject was a smoldering conflict with France -- a "half-war," as Adams called it, that threatened to turn into armed conflict. Adams had been elected only that year, and like President Bush, by a bare Electoral College margin.

Adams set a pattern, calling for national unity in the face of French provocation (French privateers, he said, "had inflicted a wound in the American breast"). On April 2, 1917, accusing German submarines of committing wrongs that "cut to the very roots of human life," Woodrow Wilson urged "all sober-minded men" to unite; on Sept. 11, 1990, accusing Saddam Hussein of "trying to wipe a country off the face of the earth," the first President Bush apealed to political leaders to "come together to fulfill our responsibilities."

But George W. Bush went to Capitol Hill Thursday night with a different agenda. He had no need to rally the country behind him; like the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did the rallying themselves. In that sense, though not others, Bush's situation matched that of Franklin D. Roosevelt on Dec. 8, 1941.

Unlike Roosevelt, who knew at once that Japan was the enemy, Bush faces a murkier foe, little understood by the public at large, so he sought Thursday night to explain to the American people the nature of the threat the nation faces -- "to broaden and deepen the American people's understanding of what it is we face," as Rice said, "and how we're going to have to face it."

The challenge that Bush faced Thursday night and will continue to face in the months ahead, said Richard Holbrooke, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany and the United Nations, "is channeling the public's emotions in a clear direction, because Americans are confused and, in many cases, scared."

Confusion may have resulted in part because Bush waxed rhetorically hot and cold in the first week after the attacks. At times he sounded like the Rambo figure so feared by many Europeans, as when he said he wanted Osama bin Laden, the suspected terrorist leader, "dead or alive." At times he seemed attuned to Middle Eastern sensitivities, noting that not all Arabs were terrorists; once he described the anti-terrorism struggle as a crusade, despite the anti-Muslim overtones that phrase has had for hundreds of years.

But confusion may be inevitable. Americans have had relatively little direct experience with terrorism, unlike the British, who have struggled for decades with the Irish Republican Army, and the Spanish, who have fought the Basque separatist group ETA for many years. And Americans expect quick or at least clear-cut victories. The lack thereof eventually doomed the Vietnam adventure, and they have proved elusive for the Europeans as well.