U.S. Has Put Itself Out on a Long Limb

As the bombing progresses, the crater the U.S. has dug for itself gets ever bigger. It is not so much that the bombing of Afghanistan has stirred a hornets’ nest in neighboring Pakistan, where militant fundamentalist allies of the Taliban and Al Qaeda itch to get control of that nation’s nuclear arsenal. It is that it has destabilized the United States’ carefully nurtured relationships with the pillars of the Islamic world: Saudi Arabia, with its oil wealth and holy sites, and Egypt, with its large population and sense of historical destiny.

If these diplomatically and militarily tight relationships become undone, then the whole script of the Middle East story will have to be rewritten.

There will be no reliable fixer of the world oil price, no trustworthy Arab interlocutor with the Palestinians.

Israel will be surrounded by enemies who have lost all patience with its prevarications.

There will be no one to hold back the stealthy preparations that both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have made to go nuclear.

The essence of the problem is this: While the pro-Western Egyptian and Saudi leadership has never had any deep sympathy for the fundamentalist radicals, neither government has ever felt motivated to shut down its ceaseless propaganda against Israel and the U.S. Indeed, they have regarded the wild talk as a safety valve, more acceptable than calls for more democracy or respect for human rights within their own political order.

This balancing act could last only as long as there seemed to be progress on the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and as long as that day arrived before the militants had made too many preparations of the kind that led to Sept. 11. But there was always a kind of inevitability about terror.

Yet Washington lived with the ambiguities of the Saudi government, never contemplating that Saudi Arabia would refuse the use of its large and sophisticated base. It never guessed that Egypt--which the U.S. has subsidized to the tune of $2 billion a year--would not, in the United States’ great hour of need, rally itself to give the U.S. a visible Arab military ally.

Instead, the U.S. has been left almost naked in its quest. True, the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference has condemned the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, but the statement, if read for what is omitted, is very much the bare bones of a supportive declaration. Even in the West, ones senses, for all the rhetoric of the leadership of Germany and France, a wish by many people to hold back from serious military involvement. Only Britain has rushed forward, despite Prime Minister Tony Blair’s original conviction that bombing might be counterproductive.

So now the U.S. finds itself on the longest of limbs. Only good fortune--the unlikely event that the bombing does smoke out Osama bin Laden--can save face. But even Bin Laden’s capture would no more end the terrorism than did the capture and eventual killing of the drug baron Pablo Escobar halt drug trafficking from Colombia. Undoubtedly, however, Bin Laden’s arraignment would give time for everyone to catch their breath. The bombing offers only a small chance of such success.

Meanwhile, the longer it continues, the more it riles public opinion. The big changes have to happen sooner or later, later being three months from now at most. This means that the U.S. has to use its political and financial muscle to push Israel into some forward movement agreeable to Palestinians. It means that the U.S. and Europe must stop trying to settle the petrodollar problem by marketing sophisticated armaments to the Middle East. Rather, they must seek rapid ways of cutting their dependency on Middle Eastern oil and push for a marked improvement in human rights practices.

This does not mean not being engaged or friendly with these governments. Quite the contrary. All-out embargoes never did anyone any good, as relations with both Iraq and Iran have shown. But if sanctions are used, they must be used with discrimination and care, primarily aimed at the military sector. This may not make the bitter spirits of Bin Laden go away, but it will drain the swamp in which his mosquitoes hatch.

As for him, he should be pursued with the same diligence that the Israelis once hounded Adolf Eichmann. With quiet police work, not noisy war work.