WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 (UPI) -- With an Oval Office meeting Monday with Algeria's head of state, Abdul Azziz Bouteflika, President Bush begins an intense 10 days of diplomatic meetings in which he must redefine the objectives of the U.S. war on terrorism and reassure allies that the U.S. is meeting them.
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 Qaida network dismantled and the Taliban government of Afghanistan punished for giving the alleged 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 undoing the al Qaida 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, Washington has swirled with doubts. 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 began 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's technological might is likely to be so devastating and destructive to civilians that it may alienate Muslim 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 President 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 (the alleged leader mastermind of Sept. 11.)"
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 that a quick victory over the Taliban.
At the same conference, Richard Perle, a 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 said he 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, claims 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 the 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 had now 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 worse than a drawn-out campaign.
