Where were you in the war, Dick Cheney?

War on Terror: Washington - Many of the Americans and Britons now baying for blood never fought in a war. Colin Powell did: could this explain his doveish stand? By Andrew Stephen

A tornado touched down in Washington on Monday night - two students were killed - but its deadliness did little to divert the capital from its increasing jitteriness. I know a close friend of the Bush family, a former White House official, who lives in the heart of Georgetown and is now genuinely convinced we will all soon die horrible deaths from smallpox; a doctor friend advised me to get an anthrax injection next time I visit Britain, as supplies for vaccine are apparently more easily available in the UK. Meanwhile, under the flight path of the presidential helicopter Marine One, taking George W Bush back from Camp David, we are becoming used to the low-altitude passes of F-15s thundering overhead as they make sure the skies are clear before escorting the president's helicopter safely back to the White House.

Yet "going to war" still means something different to Americans than it does to most of the rest of the world. It means tearful farewells by wives, girlfriends, children and parents at naval dockyards and air force bases - with the knowledge that a small number of men might not come back. Even in the Second World War, the hardships of war to the majority of Americans meant little more than this, plus some petrol rationing and sugar shortages. What makes this "war" so different (and some now believe, incidentally, that President Bush used the term specifically to save the bacon of the insurance industry, acts of war not being covered by insurance) is that it could so easily degenerate into a conflagration whereby even more deadly reprisals may yet be unleashed on the US for years to come.

Indeed, in the shocked daze of anger and vengeful euphoria in which America finds itself, attention is dwelling only on the revenge and havoc that the US military can now wreak - not on the possibly dreadful repercussions for both the US and much of the rest of the world if careful, prudent policies are not followed.

Hearing a group of American friends discussing confidently and bloodthirstily at the weekend how US forces would now "take out" this country and that country and so on, I pointed out that it was less than a generation ago that the Vietcong "took out" 59,000 Americans in a humiliating military defeat where US military might failed abjectly (actually, around half those 59,000 died in accidents or of natural causes). The analogy was not wholly welcome, even though the US has now ringingly declared war on a virtual worldwide Vietcong.

More than ever, therefore, we need calm voices and clear minds. Bush looked distinctly agitated when I saw him in the White House, just before he left to make his rallying call to war before Congress - by which time he, or someone, had effected a transformation into confident world leader. Could he meantime, I wondered, have taken a beta blocker or two, or was he just being driven by adrenalin? His pronouncements ("either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists"), his promises (that we will bring "our enemies to justice, or justice to our enemies") and his stated ultimate aim ("it will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated") were tailored perfectly for a domestic audience which, if shocked and angered by 11 September, still believed in the invincibility of US military power and resolve.

The one man at the White House that night who did, indeed, look thoroughly in command and up to the job was Colin Powell - the man who, so far, has stood up to those White House and Pentagon hawks. Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy to the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and perhaps the most hawkish member of the administration, wants another outright military war on Iraq - and has hinted, along with Rumsfeld, that the US might consider using nuclear weapons, too. I have a senior Republican friend who once asked Wolfowitz what his actual job was at the Pentagon. "Powell," he replied succinctly. "My job is to neutralise Powell."

That little private exchange puts in a nutshell the split between Powell and his colleagues to which I have frequently alluded in these pages. But Powell, looking much younger than his 64 years when I saw him, has come out swinging - saying that the use of nuclear weapons will not be necessary, and insisting to the rest of the war inner cabinet of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, that any full-scale assault on Iraq must be ruled out if he is to continue to try to forge a genuine international coalition.

Unlike Bush and practically all America, Powell makes a crucial distinction between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And he adds, in what is a downright repudiation of the warmongers: "Let's not assume there will be a large-scale war. I don't know that we should even consider a large-scale war of the conventional sort."

Now, Powell is a soldier who, besides commanding the Gulf war effort, won medals in Vietnam: Cheney, to take just one example from the eager team of hawks, received no fewer than five deferrals of national service, so that he avoided it completely. Powell, therefore, can hardly be described as some lefty, appeasing wimp - and, in the words of one insider to me last Tuesday, "He's still hanging in there." He, more than anybody, knows that the rhetoric of war currently keeping this country awash with bellicose fervour will need ultimately to be toned down if targeted, sure-footed strikes are to be made against terrorist bases.

Powell's more temperate approach - one that is much more likely to lead to success against the terrorists - now needs all the friends, both in Washington and abroad, that it can get. The British embassy here won a public relations coup getting Tony Blair into Congress for Bush's speech, after what had been a pretty disastrous trip to New York; Bush, having said a few weeks ago that the US has no closer friend than Mexico, repeated similar words about Britain, and then marvelled that Blair had "crossed an ocean" to show solidarity with the US (he didn't seem to understand that Blair would have circled the globe 17,000 times just for that bit of primetime exposure).

While Blair's mantra on his US trip - that the US was the only country to have stood "shoulder to shoulder" with Britain during the Blitz - revealed the Prime Minister's heartbreaking ignorance of modern international history, his bellicosity emerged as one of the most disturbing and depressing side features of what has developed since 11 September. It is as though advocating unequivocal support of thoughtless aggression is the only way Britons feel they can show sympathetic friendship towards the US after the outrages. Keyboard colonels are springing up in the British media with more relish than even here, their enthusiasm to see other people's blood spilled exceeded only by their confused, mean-spirited diatribes spewed out at those who counsel caution. To those of us who have been under terrorist fire or who have even been temporarily deafened by mortar shells loosed off in the mountains of Afghanistan, this generation of safely non-combatant, baying British baby boomers is indeed dismaying.

But there are still a few cool heads here, notwithstanding the war rhetoric and widespread expectations of forthcoming military glory. The hawks want to "take out" an area of Afghanistan and then use that as a US base and fire fortress, simultaneously launching a sustained bombing attack on Iraq and possibly other states, too. Powell, meanwhile, advocates a much more low-visibility war of attrition against terrorism, using intelligence garnered from an international coalition that will gradually but inexorably tighten the noose around Bin Laden and his men.

Yet that display of pyrotechnics from some safely faraway land, glamorised and sanitised by international cable television news, is what the American people have now come to expect of US wars. That is also what they now confidently await any day now; Powell, therefore, has the battle of his life on his hands.

Meanwhile, spare a thought for some friends of mine who had a six-year-old boy when I came to the United States for the Observer nearly 12 years ago. Next week, that little boy has to sign up. For the draft.

© The Author © New Statesman Ltd. 2001. All rights reserved. Please contact the publisher.
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VP Cheney received deferments for being a student and then when he and Lynne had a child. During the Vietnam War the following classifications were available:

Class I-S: Student deferred by law until graduation from high school or attainment of age of 20, or until end of his academic year at a college or university.

Class II-S: Student deferment.

Class III-A: Extreme hardship deferment, or registrant with a child.

Big deal, signing up for the draft. I signed up. So, what. Cry me a river, dumba$$.

Have you not heard? bin Laden views each and every taxpayer as a soldier; a part of the military. So, it really doesn't matter whether you're in uniform or not.

My advice: buy a gun-buy some shells-learn to shoot the gun-get a concealed carry permit (if your state doesn't have this law, get it passed)-be prepared to kill some terrorists within your borders (God forbid that time ever comes). Because we're all members of the military to this psycho a$$holes.

I pointed out that it was less than a generation ago that the Vietcong "took out" 59,000 Americans in a humiliating military defeat where US military might failed abjectly (actually, around half those 59,000 died in accidents or of natural causes).

Frightfully ignorant statement. Wonder where he picked up these little morsels of misinformation.

Cheney, to take just one example from the eager team of hawks, received no fewer than five deferrals of national service, so that he avoided it completely.

As did many other young men, at the time. A deferral was LEGAL. There were many reasons allowed.

This brit wimp is knocking Cheney, and building up Powell. It is good management for the President to have alternate views and input. Administrations OFTEN to have the tension of such views. Powell is playing a role.

Based on what I state above, I would rather have the appeaser/dove as Secretary of State--the diplomatic side. And the warmonger/hawk on the Defense side. Just exactly as G. W. Bush does have it. Okay.

there isn't a single minute of military service among any of them.

Not true. Dashole served in the Air Force at SAC, in Omaha I believe, from 69-72. Bonior was an enlisted cook in the Air Force, even though a college graduate and was stationed in California from 68-72. He attended night school and got his masters degree while not cooking SOS.

You and I would probably agree that serving in Nebraska or California during Vietnam is a stretch as far as tough duty is concerned, especially considering where they could have been and I have my own opinion of "service" in the Air Force, but those two pukes are indeed veterans.

The draft was continuous from Korea through 1973. They should not have had to draft him, he should have volunteered out of a sense of service. As I recall, his exact quote regarding this was "I had other priorities". We can be thankful that others had service to their country as a priority.

If he had done this, he would have been able to defend the Reagan "Don't Belong, Don't Join" policy...and I as a commander would not have had to deal with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". I am sure James Webb would have been able to explain to Barney Frank precisely why the romantic element does not belong on the combat team. Having never commanded (in combat or otherwise), ole Dick did not and does not have a clue.

Finally, if you need a subject matter expert, you bet it is better to have somebody who has done it before. That's true of accountants, carpenters, doctors, welders, lawyers, farmers, mariners...and people who wage war! We have had eight years of folks without a clue...enough is enough.

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