The Associated Press
Sgt. Jeremy Ray of Spokane (from left), Spc. Ryan Nemeth of Colorado Springs, Colo., and Spc. Mathew Dalke of Pablo, Mont., wait near the runway Friday at Bagram air base for a plane to fly them out after six months of duty in Afghanistan.

War successful so far, but next step unclear

Fears of future attacks continue to haunt agenda

CARL WEISER, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

Originally published Sunday, April 7, 2002

WASHINGTON -- The first six months of the military war on terrorism have been a lot like the new era the United States finds itself in: a little strange.

On Oct. 7, the United States began firing cruise missiles at Afghanistan, a poor, desolate country it had helped arm and train for warfare -- against the Soviets.

The mightiest nation on Earth found itself searching cave-to-cave for a one-eyed Muslim cleric and a terrorist mastermind -- and failing to catch either.

The war has mixed 21st-century precision-guided weapons, 1950s-era bombers and tribal warriors on horseback.

The number of U.S. soldiers in combat in Afghanistan is smaller than the number of troops at the Salt Lake City Olympics.

By all accounts the first six months of the war have been successful. The terrorist-harboring Taliban was toppled, and al-Qaida's terrorist training camps overrun, with limited U.S. casualties.

But no one knows where this war will go next or how long it might last.

"It's a war unlike any other America has ever fought," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this month. "When I'm asked how long we can continue the war on terrorism, when will it end and how will we know when we've achieved victory, it seems to me there is only one answer. The answer is, as long as it takes. We'll go wherever it is necessary to win."

While the first major protest against the war is scheduled for April 20, the war remains overwhelmingly supported by the public and politicians of both parties.

"Remember why we went in the first place," said Sen. Joe Biden, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Like Rumsfeld, he said the United States should fight terror "as long as it takes."

"If it took 50 years, we've got to get that done, or there's going to be more buildings coming down in America," Biden said.

Asked about Afghan civilian deaths -- estimated generally in the low thousands -- Biden defended the military for doing an extraordinary job minimizing casualties.

"We have in a major way upset the ability of al-Qaida to operate with the impunity they were operating with. We have in a fundamental way changed the environment in Afghanistan," he said. "The hard part really begins now."

No one claims the war is close to won. CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate last month that, despite the military victory in Afghanistan, al-Qaida remains the greatest threat to the United States. Even scarier is the specter of terrorists armed with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Years to go

The war, it's become clear, will take years. It will spread to other countries, and it will continue to change.

Already, the war has expanded to the Philippines, the former Soviet republic of Georgia and Yemen, where the U.S. military is training local forces.

The Bush administration's next major military target may be Iraq, not because of any direct links to al-Qaida but because it could sell them weapons of mass destruction.

The next phase of the war will be less military-oriented, and tougher, said Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to both President Ford and the first President Bush.

"The war on terrorism is basically a war of intelligence," he said. "Every time they (the terrorists) speak or move or get money or spend money, there is a trace somewhere."

Except for countries where the government is essentially powerless, as in Somalia, most of the war will be fought by local law enforcement, with the help of U.S. intelligence, said Michele Flournoy, a former Clinton administration Pentagon official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Public support for the war remains strong, but there are dissenters. The first major anti-war protest is scheduled for April 20 in Washington, D.C., though its organizers are mostly political fringe groups like the Black Radical Congress, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship of Berkeley, Calif., and local Green parties and Socialist Workers clubs.

"A lot of innocent people were killed in Afghanistan that had nothing to do with the Taliban or al-Qaida," said Nathaniel Miller, a University of Delaware senior who is organizing local students for the rally. "I'm not sure that's a price that's worth paying to dismember a few al-Qaida cells in Afghanistan."

Questions

Some peace-oriented think tanks have also questioned the direction and success of the war. The Cambridge, Mass.-based Project on Defense Alternatives said the victory in Afghanistan hasn't made the United States any safer. If anything, the group said, it has inadvertently inspired increasing anti-American fury around the world.

"Seldom has the gap been so great between the clarity of battlefield victory and the uncertainty of what it has wrought," the group's Carl Conetta wrote in a six-month retrospective of the war.

The increasingly bloody war between Israel and the Palestinians has hurt the U.S. cause in the Islamic world as well.

There is a growing view that fighting terrorism means helping the world's poor, uneducated and repressed masses. Bush has pledged a 50 percent increase in foreign aid.

Terrorism is also seen at least partly as a backlash against globalization, which the United States symbolizes.

"To most of the world, it's frightening, bewildering, confusing and threatens to undermine societies bound by centuries of tradition," Scowcroft said. "Out of this sort of thing, terrorism is born."

War at a glance

Facts about the military war on terrorism:

- Launched: Oct. 7, with cruise missile attacks on Taliban facilities in Afghanistan

- Cost: About $2 billion per month

- U.S. casualties: 43, mostly in accidents

- Afghan casualties: Unknown. Estimates of civilians killed range from several hundred to thousands.

- Prisoners: 300 held at Guantanamo, Cuba

- President Bush approval rating: 79 percent

- U.S. support for the war: 80 percent

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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