Whose War Is this

In his resolve to hunt down and kill the Osama bin Laden terrorists he says committed the Sept. 11 massacres, President Bush has behind him a nation more unified than it has been since Pearl Harbor. But now Bush has been put on notice that this war cannot end with the head of bin Laden and the overthrow of the Taliban.

The shot across Bush's bow came in an "Open Letter" co-signed by 41 foreign-policy scholars, including William Bennett, Jeane Kirkpatrick, the publisher of The Weekly Standard and the editor in chief of The New Republic — essentially, the entire neoconservative establishment.

What must Bush do to retain their support? Target Hezbollah for destruction and retaliate against Syria and Iran if they refuse to cut all ties to Hezbollah and move militarily to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Failure to attack Iraq, the neocons warn Bush, "will consti tute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."

"Our purpose in writing is to assure you of our support as you do what must be done to lead the nation to victory in this fight," the letter ends.

Implied is a threat to end support if Bush does not widen the war to include all of Israel's enemies, or if he pursues the U.S.-Arab-Muslim coalition of Secretary of State Colin Powell. Among the signers is Richard Perle, chairman of Bush's own Defense Policy Board, a key advisory group.

This letter represents one side of a brutal policy battle that has erupted in the capital: Is it to be Powell's war or Perle's war?

The final decision Bush makes will be as historically crucial as Truman's decision to let MacArthur advance to the Yalu, and FDR's decision to hold up Eisenhower's armies and let Stalin take Berlin.

In his address to Congress a week ago, Bush declared: "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." The president seemed to be offering amnesty, or conditional absolution, to rogue states if they enlist in America's war, now, and expel all terrorist cells.

Even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is signaling that what matters is not where nations stood, but where they stand. On Sunday, he said on CBS: "What we are looking at today is how are these states going to behave going forward."

And Powell's coalition is coming together. Whether out of fear or opportunism, Libya, Syria, Iran and the Palestinian Authority have all denounced the atrocities of Sept. 11. Pakistan has joined the coalition. Sudan is cooperating.

But calls for a wider war dominate the neoconservative media. The Weekly Standard's opinion editor, David Tell, wants war not only on past sponsors of terror, but also on "any group or government inclined to support or sustain others like them in the future."

Bennett wants Congress to declare war on "militant Islam" and "overwhelming force" used on state sponsors of terror such as Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran and even China. The Wall Street Journal wants strikes "aimed at terrorist camps in Syria, Sudan, Libya and Algeria, and perhaps even in parts of Egypt."

Terrorism expert Steve Emerson puts Lebanon's Bekaa Valley at the top of his list. Benjamin Netanyahu includes in the "Empire of Terror" to be obliterated: Hamas, Hezbollah, "the Palestinian enclave," as well as Iran, Iraq and Taliban Afghanistan. Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt of the Project for the New American Century want Iraq invaded now: "Nor need the attack await the deployment of half a million troops. ... The larger challenge will be occupying Iraq after the fighting is over."

As of now, Bush is laser-focused on bin Laden and the Taliban. But when that war is over, the great policy battle will be decided: Do we then dynamite Powell's U.S.-Arab-Muslim coalition by using U.S. power to invade Iraq? Do we then reverse alliances and make Israel's war America's war?

If the United States invades Iraq, bombs Hezbollah and conducts strikes on Syria and Iran, this war will metastasize into a two-continent war from Algeria to Afghanistan, with the United States and Israel alone against a half-dozen Arab and Muslim states. The first casualties would be the moderate Arabs — Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states — who were our Cold War and Gulf War allies.

The war Netanyahu and the neo cons want, with the United States and Israel fighting all of the radical Islamic states, is the war bin Laden wants, the war his murderers hoped to ignite when they sent those airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

If America wishes truly to be isolated, it will follow the neoconservative line. Conservatives should stand squarely with President Bush — and Gen. Powell.

American interests are hardly a "paleocon battle". Neocon interests, however, are hardly American and as such should be a subject to scrutiny, yours included. The terrorists mostly come from American allies in the Middle East, not Iraq. The Saudis are also the ones financing jihads in Chechnya and the Balkans.

We need to erase those people (and ONLY those people) who dared to murder Americans on American soil and then extricate ourselves from the whole business as quickly as possible.

Those people may have been supported by Hussein, which means there'll be more terrorism shortly. And nukes.

We're going to be in the Gulf for a good long while, my friend. You may as well get used to it.

The war-mongering neocons are out in the open to show their agenda. Let American people take notice

Neocons have been believing their own PR that the US is the world's only superpower. There are limits to everyone's power, including America's. America is economically and militarily unable to fight two wars. If we do go nuclear, the Islamics can destroy their oil fields and the West's lights will go out. If the neocons get their way, we stand to have worse upheavals than Russia did after the fall of the Soviet Union, and as a people Americans are far less able to endure hardship than Russians are. We've never had to.

Not sure about Condi. She doesn't have the tribal loyalty to Israel that the majority of the neocons are sharing, but wasn't she a student of Albright's father, Korbel?

I don't know. She's seems very reasonable. Everyone else in the adminstration is a warmonger so I would think she must be on the Powell side or Bush would have unleashed the NEOCON FURY by now. Rice seems very close to Bush so I have to assume that whatever strategy Bush follows is more or less determined by her advice. That is just my impression, however, and I don't know that much about her intellectual pedigree.

In his address to Congress a week ago, Bush declared:
"From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism
will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

I like Pat, I really do, But he's wrong on this one.
Bush must lead. He must lead his staff, our military, our nation, and the civilized world.
He must lead to victory over the evil that is terrorism.
It's his big chance to be remembered in history as a great President, or as the guy who like his father let evil slip through his fingers.

Anytime Buchanan comes on...I suddenly become interested in tabloid news...definitely more on the level than Buchanan's histrionics about isolating American interests, immigration, and his other silly posturings.

Don't get me wrong...Immigration to this country needs a MAJOR, SERIOUS, and THOROUGH overhall...the kind equivalent to a national enema of illegals. However, I have always found Buchanan's attitudes towards an outreach to make better relations with the Western Hemisphere as well as other countries to be hysterical and alarmist. In other words, I think he would have mad a BAD BAD president...and I am glad he got no further thant he primaries. I hope he never does.

Those people may have been supported by Hussein, which means there'll be more terrorism shortly. And nukes.

I think the keyword there is may have.

We're going to be in the Gulf for a good long while, my friend. You may as well get used to it.

That may be true but if you just start picking off Islamic countries you are going to ignite a war of civilizations. If that happens, we had better be prepare to kill every last Arab and/or Muslim on the face of the earth because they will keep coming at us. They are like American Indians in this regard. They will run at us with tomahawks if that is all they have.

Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. That goes double for the Arabs.

You don't have to pick off Arab countries.

Just one will do nicely. The rest will get the message.

I suspect your hyperbole about the "Muslim warrior" is a little overblown.

The average Arab has no more of a desire to die than you or I do.

You tell me how much Saudi Arabia cares about Saddam Hussein when they pay us to keep soldiers in country to protect their oil.

Thanks for the post. By the way, while we're knee deep in Muslim blood and Afghani strife, I wonder if one of our other "obligations" might take note of our preoccupation: the Chinese situation with Taiwan, or the border of South Korea, or perhaps the Balkan mess. How long till the world figures out we're running the biggest con game in town?

American interests, articulated by Bush, are to hunt down the terrorists wherever they are. If they find harbor in Iraq or in Saudi Arabia, that's who the enemy becomes, quite regardless of what the Weekly Standard says, or Buchanan says. Since the terrorist cells are extranational (Osama is Yemeni and grew up in Saudi Arabia, Taliban are Pushtun-Pakistani, some of the perps of 9/11 were Egyptians, Palestinians have a terror network of their own), it is foolish to limit the war to any particular country at the outset.

We need to erase those people (and ONLY those people) who dared to murder Americans on American soil and then extricate ourselves from the whole business as quickly as possible.

So I take it we could have ended the war in the Pacific after the battle of Midway in June, 1942, when the bulk of the carriers and pilots who participated in the Pearl Harbor attack were destroyed. We could have then extricated ourselves from the whole bloody business.

"Neocons have been believing their own PR that the US is the world's only superpower."

Now is appears the neocons were the ones who think Bush is dumb. They have supported him in the past because they thought they could lead him around by the nose. Now when he is setting his own course, they are treatening to withdraw support.

Message to President Bush 'ye hardly knew them' - the press is about to descend upon you.

Glad to have Pat's support, although it means nothing in the long run.

Wrong again my friend, truth is beginning to win out, and Pat has always been a leader , pounding with the truth against all odds.

With this and more analytical comments to come, Pat has defeated the Liberals, moderates and neo cons. Why don't you comment on what Pat said, you have always seem to avoid doing so.

I'll repeat, Pat is one of the greatest thinkers that this country has produced and a great patriot.

If they find harbor in Iraq or in Saudi Arabia, that's who the enemy becomes, quite regardless of what the Weekly Standard

If you really believe that our reaction to Saudi Arabia harboring terrorists would be the same as it would be to Iraq doing the same, you are extremely naive.

The history doesn't revolve around the paleocons' battles with the neocons. Buchanan's view is presented here, and it is myopic: that Bush should check with various politicians' leanings and affiliations, rather than with the realities in the Middle East. Perhaps the neocons' views are just as myopic, I don't know. We can only discuss what's posted.

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