President Bush returns to the White House on Saturday after visiting Camp David in Maryland.

War is far from finished

Military leaders say we're in this for the long haul

CARL WEISER, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -- The war in Afghanistan is over -- we won! -- but the war on terrorism is just beginning.

The Bush administration fears that the public will remember the former but forget the latter.

In his State of the Union speech Tuesday, Bush is likely to reiterate, as he does in almost every speech, how important it is for the United States to keep pursuing terrorists, to do "whatever it takes" -- a favorite phrase -- to end terrorist threats.

"Whatever it takes, whatever it costs, this patient, this resolved nation will win the first war of the 21st century," he told the Reserve Officers Association last week. "Our fight against terrorism began in Afghanistan, but it's not going to end there. America will not rest; we will not tire until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, has been stopped and has been defeated."

To fight the war, he will ask Tuesday for the largest increase in military spending in 20 years. That money will go for a pay raise, more precision-guided weapons, more unmanned planes and more high-tech tools for soldiers to help them pursue terrorists to "the dark corners of the Earth."

"If we have to go into 15 more countries, we ought to do it," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.

For the moment, the fact that Osama bin Laden is still unaccounted for -- maybe dead, maybe alive -- is keeping the public intrigued.

But will the public stay as engrossed and supportive when U.S. troops tangle with terrorists in the Philippines or Somalia? If casualties, few so far, mount? If American troops are still in Afghanistan five years from now? If military families begin to tire of extended deployments?

More than 70,000 reservists and guardsmen have been called to duty, and thousands more on active duty have been forbidden from leaving or retiring.

"We're just about in the middle of the first inning of a nine-inning ballgame," said retired Rear Adm. Stephen H. Baker, now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

The war on terrorism, Baker said, "is here to stay as part of our lifestyle for a good amount of time."

To the government, military experts and the public, the war is going extraordinarily well so far. Hundreds of terrorists have been captured or killed, and one terrorist-supporting government toppled.

Other governments around the world are moving to arrest terrorists and freeze their money. Some, like the Philippines, have invited U.S. troops to help root out terrorists.

Seeking normalcy

Some Americans, eager to return to normalcy, are beginning to wonder, as Baker put it, "How long do I display the flag?"

Some might begin to question why the military is "asking for more and more and more money," said Rodger Baker, senior analyst with Stratfor, a private consulting firm specializing in global security risks.

The risk is not so much that Americans might want to bring their troops back home -- relatively few have been deployed -- but that they will simply forget they are there, he said.

A poll released last week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed the public now rates building anti-terror defenses at home a higher priority than taking military action to destroy terrorist networks overseas.

But the same poll showed most Americans support military action in Iraq, Somalia and Sudan. More than nine out of 10 people surveyed agreed that bin Laden's capture won't end the war on terrorism.

Support for the president and the war has been almost universal.

'A lot to do'

"The public still recognizes there's a lot to do," said Phillip H. Gordon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Although the Taliban have been defeated, Rumsfeld says it's even too early to declare victory in Afghanistan. Marines have discovered several caches of weapons near their new Kandahar base, and occasional sniper fire threatens them.

"It's a dangerous place," Rumsfeld said Tuesday, specifically declining to declare victory. "There are still a lot of Taliban and a lot of al-Qaida running around, and people are still getting killed."

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