Phony War: The president's policy does not comport with the valor and sacrifice of his troops - George W. Bush and the war on terrorism

If bin Laden is alive, he may believe that, since September 11, the United States has become more vulnerable to terrorists, to rising states, and to new coalitions that see in America's careless delusions about its powers and prospects an irresistible opening for their own. And if he did believe such a thing, he would be right, though not for the first time, as you may recall.

It was he, after all, who watched for decades as this country was urged to strike at terrorists and the regimes that sustained them, and did not; as it was warned of Muslim religious fanatics piloting jets into its tallest buildings, and did nothing; as it suffered attacks upon its aviation, embassies, navy, and greatest city, and answered not by acts of war but in torrents of language, and gobbledygook at that.

But then in a month, and with fewer casualties than on a bad weekend in Houston, we subdued a country where the Soviets could make no headway in ten years, and quickly jumped to the conclusion that we now possess a revolutionary form of military power that we can direct wherever we please. We have been told, and we accept, that as we develop this wondrous power, spending as much for defense as the rest of the world combined, we should be content that our government is responding appropriately to the attacks of September 11 and making adequate preparation in regard to dangers to come. Would that this were so. It is not.

Despite its brilliant execution, the campaign in Afghanistan was peripheral and on a minor scale. With the support or acquiescence of virtually every nation in the world, the United States went in on the side of one of two exhausted combatants locked in stalemate in open country devastated by years of war and starvation. The enemy fought without allies, supply, modern weapons, communications, intelligence, cover, or control of the air. With a few thousand soldiers on the ground and an unchallenged fleet offshore, the United States was following the pattern established by Britain during its domination of much of the Middle East in the 19th century. But whereas Britain did its enemies the honor of striking at their hearts, we have not. Borrowing from Churchill's assessment of Mussolini and Ciano, the organ grinders of terrorism are Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, and bin Laden is merely the monkey.

Afghanistan is obviously of little importance in comparison with those states that have supported terrorists ab initio and that, variously, control great wealth, territory, resources, or mass (Iran's population is greater than that of Britain, France, Spain, or Italy); have influential allies and trading partners; possess biological, chemical, and/or nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; and marshal large armies, sometimes with the most modern Western armament.

If a great power such as the United States suffers a savage and destructive attack against its chief city, its high officials, and its capital, what reason is there for it to prevaricate? Why depart from Napoleon's maxim Frappez la masse, et tout le reste vient par surcroit, or (freely translated) "Strike the center, and the rest will follow"? Inspecting bank accounts and sending a battalion to Zamboanga are not adequate while state support for terrorism as we have yet to see it in its full glory, when it turns to weapons of mass destruction, remains untouched. What then checks the United States from the proper aim of its supposedly overwhelming power?

The measure of their tilt

Without leave of Pakistan, a few Central Asian republics (thus, Russia), and to varying degrees Saudi Arabia and Iran, it would not have been possible to conduct the Afghan campaign without mobilization comparable to, if differently weighted than, that of the Gulf War. And to have done so after the severe degradation of the military during the Clinton years, the United States would have had to forgo its operational potential everywhere else in the world. Pakistan alone would have been difficult to overcome, as it is in essence a country built around an armed force. Because our power is not overwhelming and does not flow virtually without limit as once it did, we had to beg and flatter the very nations many of whose people cheered as the World Trade towers collapsed. The weak coalition thus assembled was born at the expense of throwing over the essential objective, while Afghanistan, always expendable, was happily tossed from the sled to divert, delay, distract, and pay us in the hope that we would shy from doing what really must be done.

Though Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are competitors or worse, they are now mutually protective not only of their existence but of the political independence of the Muslim world vis-a-vis the West, something in which terrorism inconveniently shelters, and that they will not sacrifice for the sake of eliminating terrorism, for which they have natural sympathy. Engaged of late in frenetic reconciliation, the Iraqis, Iranians, and Saudis have formed a kind of metaphysical triangle, toward the inherent strength of which have begun to lean -- each for their own reasons -- the Turks, Kurds, Russians, the Jordanians and most other Arab states, and even the Europeans, if their disapproval of American action against Iraq be taken for the measure of their tilt.