War on Terror: What Next?

More than a thousand Marines are choppering into Afghanistan, bracing to fight a ground war. This is a sign of success. Now the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his henchmen can begin in earnest--and the Bush administration must grapple with the question of what comes next.

Just a few weeks ago, the situation looked quite different. The administration’s hawkish critics declared the war close to lost because the United States wasn’t attacking the Taliban aggressively. It’s unclear whether the administration planned all along to step up the bombing, but once it did the Taliban began to crumble.

Backing the Northern Alliance’s ground assaults with U.S. airstrikes and special forces worked far better than most in the Pentagon anticipated. The rout of the Taliban has been both a strategic and moral victory for the U.S.

Yet the most trying phase of the war is just beginning. It has been a generation since Americans regularly had to witness servicemen and women returning in body bags. But rooting out the Al Qaeda network will probably result in American casualties. Already the Pentagon has said that five American soldiers were injured during an effort to quell an uprising by Taliban prisoners apparently ready to die for the jihad. Bin Laden and his followers have no incentive to surrender. On the contrary, they court death. Their mission will be to kill as many American military personnel as possible. This very fanaticism is a reminder of why the U.S. must be willing to pay the price to extirpate these terrorists.

Certainly no one, however, is willing to pay any price and bear any burden to defeat every terrorist around the globe. And while Bush’s tough talk on this matter makes it clear that he is considering other targets, he has yet to make clear just how far he plans to take the war and why the American public should support him. On Monday, at a Rose Garden ceremony honoring two U.S. aid workers who were freed from the Taliban, Bush again warned that the battle against terrorism will be a “long, long struggle” and that we “must be prepared for the loss of life.” Calling Afghanistan “just the beginning,” he properly demanded that Saddam Hussein allow in United Nations weapons inspectors to prove that Iraq is not developing weapons of mass destruction. Bush said that countries developing such weapons “will be held accountable,” but he deliberately left vague what the American response will be if Hussein fails to comply.

Turning up the rhetorical heat may make Iraq sweat. But it won’t make it any easier for Bush to decide whether sending ground troops into Afghanistan is a prelude to expanding the war against terrorism, including taking it across the border into Iraq. And it will take a different, more detailed kind of rhetoric to sell Americans on such a plan.