Americans must adjust to a new style of war

Plunging into a new kind of war against terrorism, U.S. leaders are preparing to police the world with economic pressure tactics and far-flung engagements that go well beyond the military mobilization around Afghanistan.

President Bush signed an order on Monday freezing the U.S. assets of 27 people and organizations with suspected links to terrorism, and he pressured other nations to do the same. Bush said foreign banks that don’t comply could have their own transactions blocked in the United States.

Bush in effect fired the first shot in an unconventional war that could employ law enforcement tools as much as combat forces. “Money is the lifeblood of terrorist operations. Today, we’re asking the world to stop payment,” he said at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden. “We’re putting banks and financial institutions around the world on notice.”

The war against terrorism is analogous to the war against drugs, a multifaceted fight against furtive and well-financed opponents, sometimes using covert means.

Floridians have long experience with the war against drugs at home and nearby in the Caribbean Basin, and many of the methods used against money laundering, arms trading and drug dealing will now be waged against terrorism.

U.S. officials have made an open-ended commitment to root out a nebulous foe in up to 30 nations with no set timetable and no clear way to measure progress. Nobody knows how many soldiers it will take, how much money it will cost and where it will all lead.

It was not supposed to be like this. The hard lessons of the Vietnam War and other U.S. engagements during the past half century led to a general consensus that the United States would not intervene abroad -- especially if it meant committing forces -- without a clear sense of the goals, the cost and an exit strategy. President Bush campaigned last year on the promise he would limit U.S. engagements and prepare the armed forces for real wars, not nebulous “peacekeeping” missions.

But the massive terrorist attack on the United States mainland in the most direct and horrifying way has forced officials to prepare the public for a ubiquitous foreign intervention with no end in sight. The turnabout reflects the severity of the wound inflicted on Sept. 11 and a renewed determination to engage in world affairs as a matter of national security and self-defense.

Frozen assets

Exemplifying the new tactics for a new kind of war, Bush’s first aggressive action against suspected terrorist groups was to order a freeze on the U.S. assets of Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaida network and several related organizations. Secretary of State Colin Powell called bin Laden “the chairman of this holding company of terrorism.”

Bush’s order also bars transactions with other groups linked to the network, and it outlaws donations to charities suspected of funneling money to it. It names 11 organizations, 12 individuals, three charities and one company.

The president’s order and threats amounted to a financial counterattack against those suspected of unleashing terrorism in a war that may be largely fought by nonmilitary means.

Nonmilitary action

Much of the focus of the war on terrorism has been on U.S. armed forces converging near Central Asia for a potential military strike against parts of Afghanistan, the current headquarters of bin Laden and his accused network of terrorists. But this war will be waged on many other fronts, carried out by investigators, diplomats and even bankers, according to administration officials and security analysts.

“The idea is to increase the cost of doing business for these organizations,” said Michele Flournoy, a former strategic planner for the Defense Department. “Put them on the move, deny them sanctuary. Put pressure on those who harbor them and make it more difficult for them to have a stable base of operations. Then you cut them off from financial resources flowing through semi-legitimate nongovernment organizations and deny them access to bank accounts.

“There’s a page to be taken from many tools we use to go after organized crime in this country,” she said.

Bin Laden’s organization is believed to operate in 30 or more nations, and U.S. officials have said they will close it down one way or another all around the world.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Monday, however, appeared to back away from earlier high expectations. He said the U.S. goal is to curb the global reach of terrorism, not necessarily eliminate it. “Trying to stamp it out in every single locale all across the globe in perpetuity sounds like a pretty big task to me,” Rumsfeld said. Eliminating terrorism, he added, is “setting a threshold that is too high.”

Stressing “a whole range” of options, he said the aim is “to create a situation where it becomes in people’s interest to not support terrorists or terrorist networks and, where they exist, to attempt to make life uncomfortable for them, and expel them or turn them in.” Law enforcement officials for many years have applied similar tactics in the “war on drugs” to disrupt international traffickers who often use legitimate businesses and banks to launder profits.

A massive federal crackdown on money laundering and smuggling quelled much of this illegal activity in South Florida in the 1980s, forcing drug dealers to shift their main smuggling routes through other states, the Caribbean and the Southwest border.

In parts of Colombia, the war against drugs really is a shooting war, sometimes fought with U.S.-supplied military helicopters and soldiers trained by U.S. advisers. Leftist revolutionary forces and right-wing paramilitary armies, financed by drug profits, still occupy much of the country, while coca crops flourish and cocaine flows to the United States and Europe.

U.S. forces potentially face a similarly elusive foe and the perils of guerrilla-war tactics in Afghanistan and the many countries where terrorist cells are believed to operate. Shutting off their money supply and applying law enforcement tactics could prove easier than fighting them with military means, analysts said.

“I’ve always believed the most neglected tool in the fight against drugs was putting good controls on banks internationally. I think that’s clearly one way to also cripple the terrorists,” said Robert White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and now director of the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank.

Daunting challenge

Bush and other U.S. officials talk confidently of final victory, while preparing the public for a long siege against terrorism. Public polls and congressional reaction show solid support behind the war effort, and foreign governments have offered to help. The prospect of waging this campaign against a hidden foe in as many as 30 countries, however, also raises fears about getting mired in a frustrating and costly struggle.

“The more limited and realistic your aims, the better chance of accomplishing them,” White said. “Once you accomplish them, you can move on to a broader scope. To commit to the extent the president has, is a pretty daunting proposition.”