For 'Surge' Troops, Pride Mingles With Doubt
Soldiers Leave a More Secure Iraq but Are Unsure if Hard-Won Gains Will Hold
By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 21, 2008; A01

BAGHDAD -- This time last year, Capt. Wes Wilhite's men were getting ready to move into an abandoned house in western Baghdad wedged between cells of Sunni insurgents to the south and strongholds of Shiite militias to the north.

Violence in the Iraqi capital seemed unstoppable. U.S. military vehicles were getting attacked with armor-piercing roadside bombs almost daily, and a raging sectarian war was Balkanizing once-mixed neighborhoods.

"A slaughterhouse," is how Steve Murrani, an interpreter working with Wilhite's men, described it.

The soldiers, who came to Iraq as part of President Bush's troop increase, began returning home last week. They leave with sunburned faces, calloused hands, tattered boots. On their wrists they wear black metal bracelets inscribed with the names of five soldiers killed on a clear afternoon in March, just as progress was starting to seem irreversible.

They leave buoyed by a sense of pride over dramatic security improvements they helped bring about. Violence in Iraq is at its lowest level in years, the rate of U.S. casualties has dropped since the United States began implementing a new counterinsurgency strategy last year, and Iraqi politicians have made some strides in bringing about political reconciliation. But the departing soldiers are also burdened by their losses, still unable to determine whether history will call their tour a turning point or a waste of time.

"Could this all fall apart?" Wilhite, 28, a tall, lean redhead from Milwaukee, asked in an interview in early July. He sighed. "Possibly."

A Miserable Start

Wilhite's unit, the 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division's Delta Company, arrived in Iraq in March 2007.

Once-vibrant commercial districts in their area of operation, which included the neighborhoods of Jamiyah, Khadra and Amiriyah, had become ghost towns.

Sunnis in the northern part of the area had been run out of town by Shiite militiamen bent on expanding their domain. Gunmen hid powerful roadside bombs in the mounds of garbage and junk that lined the streets. A curfew then in effect wasn't hard to enforce; most people didn't venture out after dark.

The roughly 120 soldiers of Delta Company spent the first few months sleeping at a large base near Baghdad International Airport. They were soon assigned to a neighborhood outpost to live among Iraqis, train soldiers and policemen and build relationships with local leaders known for their animosity toward Americans.

The soldiers moved into the two-story house in the Washash neighborhood in August. The Joint Security Station, as the outpost was formally known, had no running water or air conditioning. Exhausted from long shifts filling sandbags and manning guard posts, the Americans collapsed at night on cots and slept in sweltering rooms.

"It was misery," Wilhite said. "In one word, it was absolute misery."

They didn't trust their Iraqi colleagues. One of the company's first missions was to detain Wilhite's Iraqi counterpart, an army officer, because U.S. soldiers discovered he was working with his cousin, the area's top militia leader.

Many of the Iraqi soldiers were undisciplined and unmotivated, Wilhite said. They frequently fell asleep at checkpoints and sometimes stole the American soldiers' food.

Building a Partnership

Backed by their considerably better-armed and -trained American partners, some of the Iraqi soldiers started showing real prowess, Wilhite said. Residents began walking into the outpost and calling its tip line.

There were limits to the partnership. In the early months, the soldiers said, they found that when they briefed the Iraqis about upcoming raids, targets would be warned ahead of time.

"We learned from our mistakes," said Spec. Derek Taylor, 23, of Huntington, W.Va. The rule became "don't tell the IA anything," he said, referring to the Iraqi army. The Americans began disclosing the locations and targets of raids only as teams were heading out, he said.

Some Iraqis proved to be competent and dedicated soldiers, Taylor said. But they never quite became comrades.

In the fall, Wilhite was ordered to hire nearly 500 neighborhood guards under a program eventually called Sons of Iraq. Most recruits were Sunnis, and some had been involved with insurgent groups responsible for attacks against American soldiers. U.S. military officials called the program a necessary step to weed out "reconcilable" extremists from those unshakably determined to kill U.S. soldiers, whom they consider "infidels" occupying their country.

At first, Wilhite said, he wasn't a big fan of the program. "What's going to happen when the money dries up?" he wondered. "The same people that are my friends now are going to be blowing me up later."

The armed guards were issued badges, khaki uniforms and hand-held radios, and given a starting salary of $300 per month. Wilhite said their recruitment and training turned out to be surprisingly smooth.

The Sons of Iraq kept militias from expanding their influence into predominantly Sunni areas and gave unemployed Sunnis who may have otherwise joined insurgent groups an income and a steppingstone into the Iraqi security forces.

In September, the Washash leader of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, was killed. His slaying triggered a few days of clashes but ultimately weakened the militia's grip in the area.

Militiamen still had a considerable presence, Wilhite said, but they grew reluctant to engage U.S. troops head-on, largely because of a cease-fire order from Sadr.

The soldiers began classifying militiamen loyal to Sadr into two groups, "black JAM and white JAM," using the military's acronym for Jaish al-Mahdi, Arabic for Mahdi Army.

Black JAM militiamen were those most likely to detect a call for violence in Sadr's often-nebulous edicts. White JAM fighters were more prone to protest than shoot when Sadr called for "civil disobedience."

The company's most pressing concern became cells of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which had pockets of support in several neighborhoods; the sectarian violence waned.

Residents felt secure enough to report months-old slayings. Iraqi and U.S. soldiers dug out the corpses of men and women buried in their own back yards.

After Calm, Pandemonium

Wilhite's men started spending more time helping shop owners reopen their businesses and visiting schools and clinics. Local leaders who had been reluctant to work with the Americans during their first few months in Washash became eager allies.

"Pretty much nothing happened between November and March," said platoon leader 1st Lt. Michael Lawson, 26, of Fond du Lac, Wis. "We never got shot at, never hit an IED. We went on raids and stuff but never saw enemy combat."

On March 10, one of Wilhite's platoons was visiting businesses, as it had been doing for months, to ask shop owners about security. At about 3 p.m., one soldier spotted someone eyeing the platoon intently as he spoke on a cellphone.

With their lieutenant on leave, noncommissioned officers were leading the patrol: Staff Sgts. Ernesto G. Cimarrusti, 25, of Douglas, Ariz., and David D. Julian, 31, of Evanston, Wyo., and Sgt. 1st Class Shawn M. Suzch, 32, of Hilltown, Pa.

As they stepped out of a shop, a man wearing sandals and a loose black robe approached and stood between two of the soldiers' Humvees. Then he detonated the explosives wrapped around his waist.

Wilhite heard the blast from the outpost. As reports began trickling in on the radio, he raced out to find a scene of pandemonium. Cimarrusti, Julian, Suzch, two other soldiers and an interpreter had been killed.

"All it took was one second," said Spec. Mathew Leisz, 25, of Minneapolis, one of the survivors of the attack. "It's something I'm going to remember for the rest of my life. It makes you think -- one man could cause all that damage. It makes you think."

Initially, the soldiers were numb.

"No one got sleep in four days," said Murrani, the interpreter. "I smoked 6 1/2 packs of cigarettes in one day."

Relatives of the dead soldiers were notified a few hours after the bombing. Two of their wives had given birth while their husbands were in Iraq.

Julian had made it home on Christmas Eve to meet his two-week-old firstborn, Elizabeth. "He was so excited," said his widow, Erin, in a phone interview. "I didn't see my daughter unless she had to be changed or fed while he was home."

She said returning to Iraq broke his heart.

"There's only been two times I've seen him cry," she said. "When he left home that day, he cried all the way to the airport terminal."

Angela Suzch said her husband hated missing out on his daughter's first few months. But he felt strongly about the work he was doing in Iraq. "His soldiers were his life," she said. "The military was his life."

Cimarrusti, the youngest of eight children, immigrated to the United States from Mexico when he was 12. He played football in high school and became a disc jockey. In 2001, he joined the Army.

"From the time he was a child, he always played soldier," said Victor Verdugo, his older brother. "He always said he would be a soldier."

'Could All Be for Naught'

Wilhite's men struggled to keep their anger and grief in check after the attack. "We don't let people get as close as we used to," said Spec. Jesse Owens, 20, of Woodbridge, during an interview in April.

"It took every ounce that I had not to lose my cool with people," Leisz said.

During a market patrol that month, Staff Sgt. Anthony S. Orosz, 36, chatted with business owners and gave them cards with the outpost's tip line. Most merchants were polite but reserved.

Orosz described their general attitude toward U.S. soldiers: "Please don't stand in front of my shop for too long."

After a conversation with one business owner, Orosz asked an Iraqi soldier standing next to him whether he had any questions for the man. The soldier looked down; he hadn't been paying attention.

Orosz and his men got back in their vehicle and drove off. Four Iraqi soldiers rode in the Humvee in front. As they left the market, the Iraqi soldier in the gunner's seat smiled, waved and blew kisses to passersby, looking more as if he was on parade than patrol.

Wilhite said he leaves Iraq feeling enormously proud. But he worries that upcoming provincial elections could incite violence if Sunnis don't feel they have made adequate political inroads.

He said he was not the arbiter of the success of the "surge" strategy. "You'd have to ask the Iraqi people," he said. "You have to ask the Iraqi government that."

Some of his men were more pointed.

"It's worth it, and it's not worth it," said Taylor, the specialist from West Virginia. "I have a wife and a kid. I go home, and my daughter is 2. She probably doesn't remember who I am."

Leisz, who survived the suicide bombing, nodded.

"It's not worth me not being there with my wife, or the friends we've lost over here," he said. "Now that the strength is going to go down, this could all be for naught."

Mullen worries about troop withdrawal timeline
1 hour, 6 minutes ago
The Pentagon's top military officer said Sunday a specific time frame for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq could jeopardize political and economic progress, leading to "dangerous consequences."

Adm. Mike Mullen said the agreement between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to set a "general time horizon" for bringing more troops home from the war was a sign of "healthy negotiations for a burgeoning democracy."

"I think the strategic goals of having time horizons are ones that we all seek because eventually we would like to see U.S. forces draw down and eventually all come home," the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said. "This right now doesn't speak to either time lines or timetables, based on my understanding of where we are."

The best way to determine troops levels, he said, is to assess the conditions on the ground and to consult with American commanders — the mission Bush has given him.

"Should that mission change, and we get a new president, and should those conditions be conditions that get generated or required in order to advise a future president, I would do so accordingly," Mullen said. "Based on my time in and out of Iraq in recent months, I think the conditions-based assessments are the way to go and they're very solid. We're making progress and we can move forward accordingly based on those conditions."

Al-Maliki was quoted by a German magazine over the weekend as saying U.S. troops should leave "as soon as possible" and he called Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's suggestion of 16 months "the right timeframe for a withdrawal." Later, his chief spokesman said in a statement that the prime minister's comments were "not conveyed accurately."

Mullen, asked about the possibility of withdrawing all combat troops within two years, said, "I think the consequences could be very dangerous."

"It hard to say exactly what would happen. I'd worry about any kind of rapid movement out and creating instability where we have stability. We're engaged very much right now with the Iraqi people. The Iraqi leadership is starting to generate the kind of political progress that we need to make. The economy is starting to move in the right direction. So all those things are moving in the right direction," Mullen said.

The military buildup in Iraq that began more than 18 months ago has ended. In recent days, the last of the five additional combat brigades sent in by Bush last year has left the country.

"The day is coming when American forces will step back more and more from combat roles," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. "The day is coming when will be doing more in the way of training and less in the way of fighting. Those goals are being achieved now. ... And so, it's not at all unusual to start to think that there is a horizon out there, in the not too distant future, in which the roles and responsibilities of the U.S. forces are going to change dramatically and those of the Iraqi forces are going to become dominant."

Mullen said if conditions keep improving, "I would look to be able to make recommendations to President Bush in the fall to continue those reductions." Asked if more troops might depart before Bush leaves office in January, Mullen said, "Certainly there are assumptions which you could make which would make that possible."

Turning attention to Afghanistan, where violence is on the rise from Taliban attacks, Mullen expressed concern about "a joining, a syndication, of various extremists and terrorist groups which provides for a much more intense threat, internal to Pakistan as well as the ability to flow — greater freedom to flow forces across that porous border."

The top U.S. commander in Iraq said in an Associated Press interview Saturday that after intense U.S. assaults, al-Qaida may be considering shifting focus to its original home base in Afghanistan. Gen. David Petraeus said there are signs that foreign fighters recruited by al-Qaida to do battle in Iraq are being diverted to the largely ungoverned areas in Pakistan from which the fighters can cross into Afghanistan.

Mullen cited "mixed progress" in Afghanistan, but added, "I would not say in any way, shape or form that we're losing in Afghanistan."

Noting U.S. participation in international talks Saturday with Iran over its nuclear program, Mullen said he was encouraged. "A few weeks ago I wouldn't have thought those were possible."

But he said he supports continued economic, financial, diplomatic and political pressure on Iran.

"I fundamentally believe that they're on a path to achieve nuclear weapons some time in the future. I think that's a very destabilizing possibility in that part of the world. I don't need — we don't need — any more instability in that part of the world," Mullen said.

Rice said she believes pressure is growing on Iran "to do the right thing." But, she added, while the U.S. is committed to a diplomatic solution, Bush is keeping all options open.

Mullen, meanwhile, discussed the fallout from a potential attack against Tehran by either the U.S. or Israel. "Right now I'm fighting two wars and I don't need a third one."

He added, "I worry about the instability in that part of the world and, in fact, the possible unintended consequences of a strike like that and, in fact, having an impact throughout the region that would be difficult to both predict exactly what it would be and then the actions that we would have to take to contain it."

Mullen appeared on "Fox News Sunday," while Rice's interview with CNN's "Late Edition" was taped Friday and aired Sunday.

___

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil/

Globalizations means fewer wars, less death
Submitted by SHNS on Fri, 07/18/2008 - 12:23. By THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, Scripps Howard News Service editorials and opinion
Two new reports about our world reiterate the overwhelmingly positive impact of globalization upon our planet, making it more peaceful and more just.

The "Human Security Brief 2007," compiled by Canada's Simon Fraser University, details the continuing overall decline in global conflict that began with globalization's rapid expansion around the planet in recent years, to include the complete absence of classic state-on-state war since 2003.

As a result, total deaths from conflicts are now lower than the world has ever seen. For anyone looking for a "new world order" after the Cold War, this is it: far fewer wars and much less death from them.

Better yet, when Iraq's bloody civil war is factored out of the equation, deaths from terrorism have declined globally since 9/11 by roughly 40 percent.

Hold Bush-Cheney accountable for botching the occupation and unleashing that violence, but make no mistake, while the sectarian strife briefly fueled al Qaeda's "cause celebre," toppling Saddam did not trigger an upsurge in global terrorism. That long war hasn't made the world more dangerous in the long run.

According to the brief's data, intrastate wars kill -- on average -- far fewer people than interstate wars, even when they are internationalized. Since 1950, the average interstate war killed approximately 35,000 people, while the average intrastate conflict killed less than 3,000, jumping to almost 9,000 when conflict spilled across borders and/or outsiders intervened.

Some look at those statistics and say, "This means we should never bother intervening in civil conflicts and instead should simply let 'em burn." But I spot the essential payoff of that implied new world order: the basic conflict America faces today is -- at worst -- one-quarter the size of death and destruction of those we routinely encountered in decades past -- all dangerous proliferation of technologies notwithstanding.

And no, that's not just a result of the death of superpower rivalry, but rather a series of signals that America has sent the global community since 1990 through our leadership of international coalitions to address regional crisis situations -- Iraq included. The more willing we are to move "down" the conflict spectrum from big wars to civil strife, the more safe we make the world by signaling our commitment to its system management. That doesn't mean America must take on all crises, just that we're trying -- in conjunction with other great powers -- to push "down" the very definition of crisis over time to lower thresholds.

The third statistic worth noting is the profound decrease in civil strife in Africa over the past few years. This is clearly tied to globalization's rapid spread, as rising Asia's huge up-tick in demand for natural resources has benefited Africa plenty, to include a substantial flow of foreign direct investment designed to pull African economics into globalization's network chains of supply and production.

But all of these positive trends constitute mere ripples before the tsunami of structural change globalization now fosters in the emergence of a "world middle class" of unprecedented size and proportion. Most estimates of today's global middle class peg it at a bit more than one-quarter of the world's population. But as investment firm Goldman Sachs argues in a paper entitled, "The Expanding Middle," globalization should add two billion new consumers to that category over the next two decades, essentially doubling the global share.

This is the essential link: regional conflicts had to be progressively eradicated to allow for globalization to expand and take deep root. The cause-and-effect dynamic that we begin to recognize on a global scale mirrors the Bush administration's success in Iraq with the improved counterinsurgency approach.

Two essential take-aways: 1) we do not live in a more dangerous world and globalization's stunning spread both reflects and feeds that happy reality; and 2) the wars we'll need to manage to protect globalization's advance are getting smaller with time.

So be unafraid -- be very unafraid!

(Thomas P.M. Barnett (tom@thomaspmbarnett.com) is a distinguished strategist at the Oak Ridge Associated Universities and author of the forthcoming book "Great Powers: America and the World After Bush.")

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

Oil Cash May Prove A Shaky Crutch for Iran's Ahmadinejad
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 30, 2008; A01

TEHRAN -- Faced with rapid inflation and growing international concern about his country's nuclear ambitions, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is relying on huge increases in oil and gas revenue to insulate his government from internal and external pressures.

Some of the same Western countries taking steps to compel Iran to stop uranium enrichment are also the biggest consumers of its oil and gas. The European Union said last week that it would freeze the assets of Bank Melli, Iran's largest, in keeping with U.N. sanctions. The E.U. is also the leading global consumer of Iranian oil and gas.

Oil wealth, which funds 60 percent of the national budget, has allowed Iran's government to exercise its power to cut interest rates and ignore warnings from the country's Central Bank that overspending will worsen inflation.

Iran earned $80 billion from oil and gas sales in the fiscal year that ended March 20, up from $35 billion three years ago. But the increasing oil revenue is causing a widening gap between rich and poor, as some businesspeople prosper while inflation eats away at consumers' purchasing power. These developments jeopardize Ahmadinejad's populist appeal and could hurt his campaign for reelection in 2009.

Since 2005, when Ahmadinejad came to power, the annual rate of inflation has risen from 12.1 percent to 19.2 percent, according to Central Bank figures. The rate reached 25.2 percent in May, the bank said.

Ahmadinejad has long tussled with economic officials, who say the government has lacked expertise. Indeed, Central Bank governor Tahmasb Mazaheri has straightforward advice for Iran's leaders: "They should decrease the budget deficit, limit spending money and refrain from using oil revenues."

Ahmadinejad announced last week that he would implement unspecified changes in Iran's banking, taxation and import systems and blamed their leaders for being "ineffective." He also conceded that inflation was a "big problem."

Ahmad Zeidabadi, an Iranian political analyst who writes for several anti-government media outlets, said that increased oil revenue had "given the government lots of self-confidence in many fields."

"When you have plenty of money you can solve many problems," Zeidabadi said. But he also noted the danger of intertwining the country's economic fate with the fluctuating price of oil. "If the price suddenly would drop, they will not be able to provide the country with necessary imports. The oil money is this government's lifeline."

A small coterie of developers, oil traders and businesspeople with lucrative government contracts are profiting from the oil boom. Shiny new BMWs crowd the streets of northern Tehran, where real estate prices have doubled or tripled and where luxury developments can command $2,000 per square foot.

But the majority of Iranians have suffered from the inflation that analysts say is partly the result of government spending. Asgar Eskandiary, 32, a teacher, said he thanked God for the health insurance he bought years ago because it paid for a sinus operation. Otherwise, he and his wife would have had to spend rent money on the operation and "we would have lost our apartment for sure," he said, drinking a warm Coke at a fast-food restaurant where a blackout to save energy had deterred other customers.

Every visit to the supermarket brings unpleasant surprises, he said. The price of milk powder, which the couple needs for their infant son, increased from the equivalent of $3 to about $4.30 in just over a year's time. He makes the equivalent of about $540 a month and "can barely cope," he said. "We spend all we have for our small baby."

The teacher said he saw only one solution. "I want to write a letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He needs to bring back the experts, people who know about economy. The government doesn't know what they are doing."

During an interview conducted by one of his close aides on state television, Ahmadinejad acknowledged last Monday that mostly the rich were benefiting from the subsidies that Iran provides for gas, water, energy, wheat and rice. He announced the establishment of national bank accounts in which the poor would receive their subsidies directly.

But analysts feared that the move would lead to more economic problems. "Yet another direct injection of money into the society will create more inflation," Zeidabadi said.

The private sector, which makes up only 15 percent of the Iranian economy, could help with providing jobs. But businesspeople say they have been particularly hurt by sanctions that target international banking.

"We simply can't transfer money, which means that we can't buy spare parts for our factories," said Bodagh Khanbodagi, honorary president of the private Iranian-German business chamber. German export credits backing trade with Iran totaled about $730 million last year, about half the value of German export credits in 2006 and one-fifth that in 2004, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service released this month.

"Nobody's coming over, and I don't see any minister visiting here in the near future," he said, sipping tea in an office decorated with pictures of himself with German and Iranian dignitaries.

Even if European companies want to deal with Iran, the financial obstacles imposed by Western countries have made payment nearly impossible, he said. "When an Iranian entrepreneur wants to purchase an engine part in Germany, he will find himself in a situation where he simply can't pay through a bank, since almost all big international banks have stopped working with Iran. What should this person do? Fly to Frankfurt carrying a briefcase holding 5 million euros? He will be arrested at the airport," Khanbodagi said.

"We are now looking towards the East," he said. "Almost everything we need we can get there. It just takes longer and some of the quality is less."

The Iranian government has been increasing ties with non-Western countries, mainly China, but relations with several South American and certain African nations have also expanded.

"Because money doesn't matter, the government has started buying many products from abroad. But this has been hurting production inside Iran and has basically made us more dependent on foreign states," said Zeidabadi, who has been imprisoned several times for his writings.

"If oil prices would have been lower, the government would have had to change its internal and foreign policies," Zeidabadi said. "Ahmadinejad now fully depends on a high oil price. They got used to the high income. But they are depending on something that they cannot control. That is a dangerous game."

Mazaheri, the Central Bank governor, is regarded as the last remaining technocrat to hold a powerful position in the Iranian executive branch, which is now mostly run by partisan supporters of Ahmadinejad. "We ask all of the policymakers, including the government, to adhere to the economic principles and not to compromise them," he said in a recent interview.

Ahmadinejad recently overruled the governor's opposition to further decreasing interest rates, which have been cut from 24 percent in 2005 to the current rate of 10 percent. "The government believes that by decreasing the interest rate they can lower the inflation rate," Mazaheri said.

If the government doesn't change its policies, he said, "inflation will increase, just as we faced higher inflation rates last year."

Mazaheri, who sports the three-day stubble that Iranian civil servants wear to honor Islam, said that when he goes shopping for groceries with his wife, she complains about the high prices.

"My wife and many Iranian people are suffering from the inflation," he said. "The rich benefit from it -- their assets increase in price and, in the absence of a fair tax and efficient tax system, their income will be more. But the majority of the people in the middle and lower class suffer."

July 18, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Coming Activist Age

By DAVID BROOKS
We’re entering an era of epic legislation. There are at least five large problems that will compel the federal government to act in gigantic ways over the next few years.

First, there is the erosion of the social contract. Private sector firms are less likely to provide health benefits, producing a desperate need for health care reform. Second, there is the energy shortage. Rising Asian demand strains worldwide supply, threatening industry and consumers, and producing calls for a bold energy initiative. Third, there is the stagnation in human capital. During the 20th century, Americans were better educated than the citizens of any other power. Since 1970, that lead has been forfeited, producing inequality and wage stagnation. To compete, the U.S. will require a series of human capital initiatives.

Fourth, there’s financial market reform. In an intricately connected world, even Republican administrations cannot allow big institutions to fail. If government is going to guarantee against failure, then it is inevitably going to get more involved in regulating how businesses are run. Fifth, there’s infrastructure reform. The U.S. transportation system is in shambles and will require major new projects.

All of this means that the next few years will be an age of government activism. You may think, therefore, that this situation is ripe for Democratic dominance. The Democrats are the natural party of federal vigor. Voters prefer Democratic approaches to issues like health care and education by as much as 25 percentage points.

Yet, historically, periods of great governmental change have often been periods of conservative rule. It’s as if voters understand that they need big changes, but they want those changes planned and enacted by leaders who will restrain the pace of change and prevent radical excess.

Two of the most prominent conservative reformers were Benjamin Disraeli and Theodore Roosevelt. Both reframed the political debate so that it was not change versus the status quo, it was unfamiliar change versus cautious, patriotic change designed to preserve the traditional virtues of the nation.

Disraeli inherited a British Conservative Party that was a political club for the landowning class. He created One Nation Conservatism, a reminder that Britain was one community, with a sense of mutual responsibility across classes. Then, at the pinnacle of his career, he embraced reform, expanding the franchise to the socially conservative working class.

Disraeli saw this change as a way to restore ancient glories. Or, as he put it: “In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change, which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines.”

Like Disraeli, Roosevelt was a romantic nationalist. While the more progressive reformers spoke the international language of modernization, Roosevelt spoke the language of highly charged Americanism.

He believed private property was the basis of American greatness. He built his persona around the classic American icons: the cowboy, fighter and pioneer.

He defended his initiatives as the way to maintain the economic and social order. People had enough change in their lives; they were looking for government that could preserve the way things already were. If the trusts threatened the traditional small businessman, he would take on the trusts. If industrialism threatened the natural landscape, he would become a preservationist.

His formula was like Disraeli’s: political innovation to restore traditional national morality. He had an image of an American hero — thrifty, hard-working, vigorous and righteous — and sought to create a Square Deal for that sort of person. “The true function of the state as it interferes in social life,” Roosevelt wrote, “should be to make the chances of competition more even, not to abolish them.”

John McCain’s challenge is to recreate this model. He will never get as many cheers in Germany as Barack Obama, but for a century his family has embodied American heroism. He will never seem as young and forward-leaning as his opponent, but he did have his values formed in an age that people now look back to with respect.

The high point of his campaign, so far, has been his energy policy, which is comprehensive and bold, but does not try to turn us into a nation of bicyclists. It does not view America’s energy-intense economy as a sign of sinfulness.

If McCain is going to win this election, it will because he can communicate an essential truth — that people in a great and successful nation do not want change for its own sake. But they do realize that it’s only through careful reform that they can preserve what they and their ancestors have so laboriously built.