NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2001

In the days after the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the president wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," the al-Qaeda network dismantled and the Taliban government of Afghanistan punished for giving the terrorists safe haven.

Leon Fuerth, former national security adviser to Vice President Al Gore, described the president's original pledge in an essay published Sunday as "forceful and galvanizing."

In the intervening weeks, Fuerth writes, Bush has made "sensible adjustments" to the original pledge. He has backed away from his threat to get bin Laden "dead or alive" to putting an end to the al-Qaeda organization. Bush has limited his terrorist targets to those "with global reach" and though still threatening states that sponsor terrorists, left a door open for governments that would "mend their ways in the future."

But as these war aims have started to blur, some in Washington have expressed doubt. Is the U.S. losing the war in Afghanistan and wavering in its aim to end the threat of terrorism? Senators, congressmen and a score of military pundits have begun to offer Bush advice on how to conduct the war.

The problem for Bush has remained straightforward: Can he root out terrorists from a half-dozen countries, mainly in the Middle East and Central Asia, without provoking a modern-day religious war with the 1.3 billion people of the Islamic faith and opening land battles on different fronts?

A forceful military campaign in Afghanistan using the United States' technological might is likely to be so devastating and destructive to civilians that it may alienate Muslims and cost foreign support. Despite all the White House efforts to stress that the war on terrorism is a broader one and not against Muslims – fought as much by cutting off terrorist financial resources and arresting members of terrorist groups – Afghanistan has become the testing ground for Bush.

James Steinberg, former deputy national security adviser to Bill Clinton, for instance, argued at a recent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace panel that the U.S. "objective here is to do what we can to disrupt and deny the ability of terrorists to conduct attacks on the United States."

But in that context, he said, in Afghanistan "our concern is not to overthrow the Taliban for the sake of overthrowing the Taliban, but rather ... to prevent them from offering a sanctuary to Osama bin Laden."

Steinberg said that U.S. policy should not be one "in which we win the battle in Afghanistan and lose the war more broadly. That's where the coalition comes into play."

Gaining the cooperation of a vast array of nations, particularly Islamic nations, to deal with terrorist financing and terrorist cells is more important in Steinberg's view than a quick victory over the Taliban.

At the same conference, Richard Perle, former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and long a hard-liner on foreign policy, rejected a good deal of Steinberg's analysis.

"What you just heard is an almost perfect representation of thinking that dominates the Department of State," he said. Perle argues that the destruction of the Taliban is essential "to demonstrate to other nations that provide sanctuary, that from here on there is a price attached to assisting an organized terror campaign."

Perle believes that in reality with the exception of Great Britain, the United States is in the war alone and must not let it be slowed or deterred by considerations of allies or coalitions.

"The fact is there isn't a coalition ... It's a completely meaningless construct."

The United States, says Perle, "must decide how it will defend itself. And if other countries wish to join us in the effort, that's good, that's fine. But if they do not wish to join us, then we simply have to do it alone."

Perle believes that the U.S. attack in Afghanistan should be swift, powerful and destroy the Taliban. Though Perle's hard line is right of the Bush administration, the president knows that Perle represents the thinking of many of the president's own party.

What gives the hard-liners resonance in the White House and Congress are weapons of mass destruction. Perle and others have concluded that the attack on the World Trade Center shows that there are no bounds restraining terrorists from killing hundreds of thousands with a nuclear device or a biological or chemical weapon.

This conclusion has driven the willingness to fight in Europe and Britain.

Perle and others believe that the limited responses to earlier acts of terrorism opened the doors to the World Trade Center attack and that we need to devise a new, tougher action against terror groups before they launch a deadly blow against the United States.

"So we fundamentally now had to rethink how we will deter the acts of terror that will include weapons of mass destruction," Perle said.

Even Fuerth, a long political distance from Perle, believes that direct action must be taken.

Bush has concluded that he has to quicken the pace of military action. He knows he needs a strong step to restore public confidence in the United States that the government can defend its people. But at the same time, Bush's advisers tell him that a clumsy military step in Afghanistan that causes major U.S. losses would be worse than a drawn-out campaign.

Algeria Voices Support

President Bush on Monday met with Algeria's leader, who pledged his country's support for the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.

"I had the occasion to reaffirm and reiterate to President Bush the solidarity of the Algerian people, with the American people in these difficult times," President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said. "Maybe Algeria, better than anyone else, can understand the suffering and the pain of the families of the victims of the attack on Sept. 11, and Algeria is determined to fulfill fully its commitment and its responsibility in fighting against terrorists within the international fight, because Algeria is aware of the necessity and the significance because it has been fighting in the past alone."

The Algerian leader was one of six world leaders visiting Washington this week for a briefing on the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.

Algeria, a Muslim nation, has been embroiled in a civil war pitting its government forces against Islamic militant groups for the past decade. In the early 1990s, an election that was widely expected to be won by Islamic parties was cancelled by the military. Unrest followed the cancellation, and in 1999, Bouteflika, a former foreign minister, was freely elected to lead the nation.

"I had the occasion of expressing to President Bush all my appreciation and gratitude for his statement and for the action that he did, since it was the correct assessment of Islam as a religion for peace and tolerance," Bouteflika said. "We share the same conviction that the attacks of Sept. 11 are not done – are not the consequence of a conflict of civilizations, but they are, on the contrary, a criminal endeavor, and we are bound and all of us are obliged, to denounce and destroy."

Bush today is to address by satellite leaders of the Central European nations in Warsaw, Poland, and brief them on the war against terrorism. He was also preparing for his first address before the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

As part of the U.S. anti-terrorism effort, Bush was to welcome this week members of the anti-terrorist coalition to the White House. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern were expected.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer described the U.N. speech and the visits as a "confluence of events, and it is no surprise that more meetings are coming prior to the U.N. address on Saturday."

Bilateral meetings with world leaders were to continue during Bush's trip to New York, where he was to meet with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has been criticized at home for his support of the U.S. campaign.

Next week, Bush is to travel to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the first time since the attacks. There, he is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The two leaders were expected to undertake discussions on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the U.S. desire to scuttle the pact in favor of a new framework that would allow testing of a missile defense shield. Bush says such a system would protect America from accidental launches or launches by rogue nations.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Bush Administration

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