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Depend on it; these expressions of support and any that follow come with a price tag. A top-level Saudi delegation to Washington last week stressed the need to address the grievances of the Palestinians. Russia will not expect to hear a lot of moaning from Americans about its behavior in Chechnya. Pakistan will expect some economic relief for its battered economy. (And Pakistan will get it; sources tell TIME that Japan has already offered cash and loan guarantees to Islamabad.) George Bush's war will be one of strange bedfellows.
But then, many wars are. In World War II, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill made common cause with Stalin — "Uncle Joe" for a brief while, but in the full measure of his life, a bloodstained monster — in the fight against fascism. Even heroes compromise, and Churchill has long been a hero of Bush. When he welcomed five religious leaders to the Oval Office last week, the President pointed out a bust of the British leader. Churchill, Bush once told TIME, was the political leader he most admired, and Card says that since Sept. 11, Bush has spoken of Churchill often.
At first glance, it's hard to imagine two men less alike. Bush has had his share of verbal stumbles; Churchill never uttered a sentence that didn't stiffen spines. Bush is fit; Churchill was whatever is fitness's opposite. Bush has forsworn the demon drink; when Churchill stayed with Roosevelt in the White House over Christmas 1941, he instructed Roosevelt's butler that he needed a tumbler of sherry in his room before breakfast, a couple of glasses of Scotch and soda before lunch, and French champagne and 90-year-old brandy before he went to sleep. About the only thing they have in common goes between the lips; very occasionally, Bush sneaks out on the Truman balcony of the White House and enjoys a cigar.
But one big thing Bush and Churchill may share. At the times when he was most challenged, and whether he was justified in his sense of self or not (and often he was not), Churchill never knew self-doubt. It seems to rarely stalk Bush. For a man leading the kit-bag-packing troops and a great wide world into a war the like of which it has never known before, that confidence is a useful attribute to have.
— With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, James Carney, Matthew Cooper, John F. Dickerson, Christopher Ogden, Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington, Scott MacLeod/Cairo and J.F.O. McAllister/London