With his visit to Baghdad, George Bush has even more closely tied his presidency to what transpires in Iraq. Most American people, the U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and most Iraqis very much want to believe in the promise implied by the president's visit: that he is personally invested in taking a very hard situation and making it better. Whether he actually does or not is very uncertain, however. Since September 11th, a large dispute within the Bush administration had raged about whether to go to war in Iraq, between various parties in the Defense Department, the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Vice President, and the president's staff. The conflict rose to such a pitch that no consensus was formed among the various agencies and experts, and the decision to go to war was made by a small group of officials and the president against a great deal of other advice. Since the current part of the war has not been easy and its peaceful end is nowhere in sight, this same dispute has continued, with the same parties in government and among the American people. Intelligence and its interpretation have been blamed, bad planning has been blamed, and even the conflict within the administration itself has been blamed for the difficulties now faced by American troops. Democrats clearly take satisfaction from the political opportunity created by the suffering of people in Iraq, as though there is any real alternative strategy to sticking it out. (Some have said that involving the U.N. or apologizing to and asking the help of Europeans, Russians, and Chinese would fix matters, but none of these has the resources or the will to help in a substantive way.) Republicans seem uninterested in the task of nation-building in Iraq, as though the nation was a welfare mother whom they convinced to keep the baby but whom they now expect to get a job. From the rhetoric of most of the politicians, it's clear that Iraq does not need more politics. The next eleven months will be the largest test of leadership a president has faced since Viet Nam. It's clear that at least some in the administration understand the stakes; Bush gave a speech recently in which he said that the U.S. would work for democracy and freedom in the Middle East, and in Baghdad he said that the U.S. had not fought a war to leave without finishing the job. More than these statements will be needed, however. In order to actually engineer a peaceful nation, more money (yes, much more than the $87 billion already pledged) and troops will be needed. Compared to asking Americans and Congress for these things, it will be relatively easy to take the next necessary step and ask U.N. for its expertise and personnel in creating viable government institutions in Iraq (much as they did in East Timor after many years of guerilla war). Nothing less will prevent Iraq from becoming a serious threat the security of people in the U.S. and nothing less will prevent Iraq from becoming a destabilizing force in the Middle East. The war in Iraq was a huge mistake. The larger mistake would be engineering a quick exit from the power vacuum the U.S. created, for reasons of political expediency and an election year, but even that mistake pales next to the mistake that will have been made if the Bush administration does not do the very difficult thing and commit itself to investing serious money and some humble pie in the task of making Iraq a safe place.