TOUGHER GOING - Are Americans ready for it?

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Editorial: Tougher going / Are Americans ready for it?

Published Oct 17 2001

The going is getting messy and more difficult. Anthrax scares come hither and thither. Images of anti-American protests, staged across a wide swath of the globe, are televised nightly. Civilian Afghan casualties mount. U.N. workers in Afghanistan are injured and killed in the bombing. International Red Cross food warehouses in Kabul are destroyed by U.S. munitions. From Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Belgium and Yemen comes word of foiled terrorist attacks. From Germany come calls from the Green Party, part of the governing coalition, for a bombing suspension. Given all this mounting complexity and tension, do the American people have the determination to see this through?

The question is asked respectfully but urgently, because it is a question the American people need to ask themselves in order to find the will and determination they need.

Rhetoric matters, and the rhetoric of this war has taken an unfortunate turn in some respects. This is not a quick, emotional war against terrorism. It is a determined and wide war, now only beginning, against bands of Islamic extremists who use terrorism as a weapon.

Those extremists are not simply lashing out. They have a powerful agenda. They aim to push the United States out of the Muslim world. The United States, ally and defender of moderate Arab regimes they regard as corrupt, stands in the way of their effort to introduce across the region a form of Muslim rule like that of Mullah Muhammad Omar and the Taliban.

It's not a coincidence that Britain is the most steadfast U.S. ally in this war; the United States is carrying on in the region where the British empire left off. American forces now ensure regional stability, primarily to ensure the continued flow of Middle East oil. The extremists seek instability. Thus they target the stabilizer.

Writing in the New York Times Tuesday, Mark Danner of the New Yorker magazine makes a powerful argument that the extremists who carried out the attacks in New York and Washington "chose to attack America at its weakest point: its political psyche." Americans generally are uninformed in foreign affairs, loath to discuss or understand U.S. interests in the world and leery of accepting a necessarily permanent international role in protecting those interests -- with American blood when necessary.

America, in short, is seen as having no military staying power -- because the American people lack the political will for sustained conflict. They like quick, surgical military actions, preferably fought with air power, as in Kosovo. A favorite American phrase in recent years has been "exit strategy." Got to have one before you commit. Avoid anything that hints of potential quagmire.

There is no exit strategy from this war or from the Middle East. The United States must win, and it must maintain stability in the region. Oil is a primary reason, and it's not one to apologize for. Economist Paul Krugman made the point in a recent column that even if the United States could wean itself from foreign oil, its allies in Europe and Japan cannot, and without them the U.S. economy withers. Moreover, U.S. energy independence, by drying up oil revenues in the Arab world, would give the Middle East the instability and chaos the Islamic radicals seek. Imagine a region-wide Afghanistan and the platform it would provide for continuing holy war against infidels.

Winning will involve sustained, creative and risk-taking military action. It will involve strong efforts for economic and political reform in the region, pressure for crackdowns on corruption and extremism alike, a new and broad-based government for Afghanistan. It will take years of American commitment.

The extremists are betting Americans haven't the stomach to keep at it. They deliberately led the United States into the military conflict now underway, believing that if they could create another Beirut Marine barracks catastrophe or another Mogadishu Army patrol wipeout -- along with great anger across the Muslim world and inevitable civilian casualties -- the American people would pressure their government into calling it quits.

Americans must show the extremists they are wrong: America will not only get the people who attacked the United States, it will defend with skill, with tenacity and without apology its interests in the region.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001


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