WASHINGTON - Though public support for revenge is high, President
Bush's military options are constrained by the difficulty of targeting
nomadic terrorists and hardships imposed by the terrain.
Still, few doubt Bush will order retaliation.
"After the bloodiest day in American history since the Civil War, those
American deaths can't go unanswered," said Dan Benjamin, a defense analyst with
the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "America won't stand for
it."
With the death of thousands of Americans at the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon, and on four hijacked airliners, Bush has an outraged nation behind
him. And Tuesday's airborne attacks drew near-universal international
condemnation.
Bush characterized the attacks as "acts of war," setting the stage for a
response in kind.
But against whom and where?
Bush has suggested that the United States would not only go after the
perpetrators of Tuesday's violence but against countries that harbor them.
Preliminary evidence pointed to fugitive Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden,
implicated in the 1998 terrorist bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa
and sheltered in Afghanistan. U.S. investigators also are looking into the
possibility that other terrorist groups or cells could be involved as well.
White House aides said privately that Bush wanted to act swiftly.
Although the United States could go it alone on retaliatory strikes,
presumably against targets in Afghanistan, U.S. officials suggested the action
would be more effective if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was involved.
Setting the stage for such possible joint action, 19 NATO ambassadors meeting
Wednesday in Brussels, Belgium, agreed that the terrorist attacks in New York
and Washington could be deemed an attack on the whole alliance, if investigators
determine they were directed from abroad.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared to be preparing U.S.
forces for possible combat. He told the troops in a videotaped message: "The
task of vanquishing these terrible enemies ... falls to you."
Robert Gates, director of the CIA during the first Bush administration, said
it was important for the current president to carefully frame his objectives and
to limit potential civilian casualties.
"Nobody should underestimate the difficulty of going after and finding a
specific individual like bin Laden," Gates said. "It's a highly complicated
intelligence challenge."
He recalled the difficulty in locating former Panamanian leader Manuel
Noriega when the United States invaded Panama in December 1989. And in the 1991
Persian Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein "was not going to wait for us
on his verandah," Gates said.
Former President Clinton tried to target bin Laden after the 1998 embassy
explosions, ordering strikes against his camps in Afghanistan as well as a
suspected chemical-weapons plant in Sudan.
But bin Laden escaped harm. And controversy remains over the true character
of the plant in Sudan.
Sandy Berger, who was Clinton's national security adviser, said Bush is
confronted with a series of hard options.
"Cruise missiles are not rifles, and Afghanistan is a thousand miles from the
nearest body of international water" from which to launch missiles, Berger said.
Still, he added, "What happened yesterday is a qualitative escalation that
requires us to consider a different risk calculation than we have in the past."
Polls taken after Tuesday's terror attacks show high public support for
retaliation. Nine in 10 in an ABC-Washington Post poll said they had at least
some confidence that the United States would find and punish those responsible.
Two-thirds of those surveyed by CBS News said the United States should retaliate
even if innocent people are killed.
"There isn't any simple military response," said Lee Hamilton, director of
the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
Hamilton, former chairman of the House International Relations Committee,
said Bush may have to give serious consideration to the use of ground forces to
get the job done. "The common habit of preferring to fight wars without
casualties is going to be called into question here."
Any mention of ground troops in Afghanistan has to recall the Soviet Union's
failed and costly military campaign there in the 1980s.
Dan Goure, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank based
in Arlington, Va., said Bush should ask Congress for a declaration of war _ even
if he doesn't name a specific enemy _ to focus national attention on rooting out
terrorism.
"We could say `conspirators to be named at a later date.' We've been attacked
at home, so you want to treat this as a war," Goure said.