Can Bush channel Churchill?

The president admires the World War II leader, but he hasn't yet copied Churchill's candor about the hardships ahead as he prepares the nation for war.

By Jake Tapper

Sept. 17, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- When he was in England in July, President George W. Bush requested a visit to the permanent exhibition of the papers of Winston Churchill at the Cabinet War Rooms in London.

"I've always been intrigued by Churchill," Bush told reporters at the time. "I think he was one of the really fascinating leaders." The British ambassador had recently brought him a bust of Winston Churchill on loan from the British government, "so Churchill is now watching my every move," Bush said.

Bush couldn't ask for a mentor with a more starkly different way of preparing a nation for crisis. In 1940, faced with bleak news and the prospects of a long, arduous and bloody conflict, Churchill girded England for sacrifice. "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat," Churchill told the British Parliament on May 13, 1940. "We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering." Later that month, in a BBC broadcast, Churchill didn't mince words on the status of the war. "The news from France is very bad," he began.

The current war against terrorism is, of course, very different from World War II, and one of Bush's most winning characteristics is his optimism. Some officials in Washington, however, are beginning to express concern that Bush has yet to begin adequately preparing the nation for what could be a long and ugly "crusade," as he put it on Sunday afternoon.

In a Saturday interview on CNBC, Samuel Berger, former national security advisor during the Clinton administration, said that he wished Bush were cautioning Americans more about what may well be in store for us. While the Bush administration began Saturday to set the stage for a war of some duration, what has not yet been laid out is that this war may well result not only in the loss of lives of American soldiers but in further retaliatory terrorist attacks against American citizens.

In the course of just six days, Bush's rhetoric has changed significantly. In early remarks he appeared to think this was a one-incident crisis, and we could simply "hunt down and find those folks who committed this act." A day later he said the attacks constituted a declaration of "war," and he'd ratcheted it up to a "crusade" on Sunday. In many ways, the evolution of Bush's comments from Tuesday through the weekend tracks the nation's learning curve as it tries to grapple with the meaning of the current crisis.

The curve is steep, but Americans are nowhere near understanding how painful and protracted this battle is likely to be. And Bush isn't taking them there -- yet. The administration has a difficult balancing act, of course. Officials want the economy to rebound and they need the American people to go about their lives -- as did the British, as much as possible, during the Battle of Britain. Thus the White House has chosen to emphasize the importance of America resuming its life -- with caution.

"Our nation was horrified, but it's not going to be terrorized," Bush said Sunday. "We're a nation that can't be cowed by evil-doers. We need to go back to work tomorrow and we will, but we need to be alert to the fact that these evil-doers still exist."

And yet the question must be asked: Is Bush preparing the nation for the challenges that lie ahead as fully and honestly as he should? "You will be asked for resolve, for the conflict will not be easy," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. But far from "blood, toil, tears, and sweat," Bush has asked for very little from the American people. Asked how much of a sacrifice ordinary Americans should expect "to make in their daily lives, in their daily routines" on Saturday, Bush said, "Our hope, of course, is that they make no sacrifice whatsoever.

War has been declared on us, he said, "so, therefore, people may not be able to board flights as quickly."

And then, on Sunday, asked if Americans should "be ready for the possibility of casualties in this war," Bush offered an odd response. Stating that "the American people should know that my administration is determined to find, to get them running and to hunt them down, those who did this to America," Bush said that Osama bin Laden's organization, al-Qaida, "is in a lot of countries" and is "based upon one thing: terrorizing."

Bush certainly didn't prepare the nation for the possibility that fighting in Afghanistan, for instance, could require ground troops, according to military experts -- and ground troops always mean high casualty rates. (Polls released Sunday showed the nation may be ready for more honesty from Bush: The vast majority of Americans told pollsters they're prepared to endure ground troops and U.S. military casualties to fight bin Laden.)

While few doubt its necessity, U.S. military action runs the risk of creating new "martyrs" and further uniting various factions against the the country and its allies. Moreover, these terrorists clearly prefer to attack civilians, not soldiers. If this war escalates, is America prepared for the kind of havoc this new warfare is likely to wreak? How does one even emotionally prepare for further attacks against civilians? These are questions that may be too horrible to even contemplate. But that doesn't mean we should ignore them, or act as if they're alarmist. Tragically, they're all too realistic.

As Thomas Friedman wrote in Friday's New York Times, "I suddenly imagined a group of terrorists somewhere here in the Middle East, sipping coffee, also watching CNN and laughing hysterically: 'Hey boss, did you hear that? We just blew up Wall Street and the Pentagon and their response is no more curbside check-in?'"

But, perhaps because of a feeling that America needs to heal more than it needs to prepare for the worst, on Sunday Bush painted a picture of an America that will regularly be diverted from the headaches its leaders will be facing. "Oh, there will be times when people don't have this incident on their minds, I understand that," Bush said.

"There will be times down the road where citizens will be concerned about other matters, and I completely understand that." The U.S. government, however, would remain focused on the problem, he said, so average Americans didn't have to.

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