Unrelished but Necessary

After anxiously awaiting the United States’ response to the terrorist attacks that killed thousands in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania Sept. 11, the world got its answer Sunday. Following almost a month of building an international coalition for an appropriate diplomatic, political and economic response, the United States added the necessary airstrikes against what it described as military and terrorist camp targets in Afghanistan. It was a step no one relished. It had to be done.

The strikes were aimed against the prime suspect in the attack, Osama bin Laden, his Al Qaeda organization and Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.

In announcing attacks directed at military facilities and terrorist camps, President Bush again sounded the need for patience and the expectation of a long campaign. It will not be easy to root out foes who he said can “burrow deeper into caves” to escape bombs and missiles. But with enough intelligence information, proper military tactics and persistence, it can be done.

The United States received welcome military help from its main ally, Britain. Prime Minister Tony Blair had pronounced the evidence that Bin Laden’s group was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks persuasive. Pakistan agreed with that judgment, adding a needed Muslim voice.

Bin Laden, in a chilling statement videotaped before Sunday’s retaliatory attacks but broadcast afterward, tried to portray the fight as one between Muslims and American “infidels” and “apostates.” He said God carried out the Sept. 11 carnage and there would be no peace until the U.S. withdrew from Saudi Arabia, site of the holiest shrines in Islam, and stopped backing Israel. Bin Laden’s rationalization for mass murder was virtually an admission of his culpability.

The United States also announced airdrops of food, medicine and supplies to Afghanistan, devastated by more than 20 years of warfare and four years of drought. That vital humanitarian mission underscores that the war is against terror, not a people, a nation or a religion.

The coalition will have to battle constantly against Bin Laden’s perversion of Islam, recognizing that his false proclamation of himself as a defender of Palestine may resonate among Muslim foes of Israel.

The thorniest part of maintaining a coalition will be the internal pressures of key nations. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s intemperate criticism of the United States’ “appeasement” of Arab states probably was made to mollify his country’s right wing. And the initial public silence from Arab states after Sunday’s attack surely had more to do with not wanting to stir up their own radicals than with denunciation of the targeted military strikes.

President Bush has said repeatedly that this conflict is not against the Afghan people or the nearly 1 billion Muslims in the world but against terror. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld noted U.S. support for Muslim populations in Somalia, Bosnia, Kuwait, northern Iraq and Kosovo. Those themes require repetition in the hard days ahead.