In his extraordinarily moving address to Congress Thursday night, President Bush gave comfort to a grieving nation and firmly established his case for America’s first war of the 21st Century.
His bearing, and his message, could not have been more resolute. Those nations of the world that harbor terrorists will cease, or they will share in the terrorists’ fate.
The battle against terrorism has been joined. The Pentagon has mobilized troops, deploying an aircraft carrier and dispatching warplanes to the Persian Gulf and areas near Afghanistan. “The hour is coming when America will act,” the president told the nation’s armed forces, “and you will make us proud.”
With the Bush administration creating a coalition against terrorism–and a procession of diplomats filing through the White House–there has been an uncanny sense of deja vu in the preparations. They reflect the careful diplomatic and military buildup to the Persian Gulf War.
The mobilization of the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and other U.S. forces, which could place up to 500 U.S. warplanes in the Mediterranean, Gulf and Indian Ocean regions, has probably heightened expectations of an imminent military response to the terrorism of Sept. 11.
But the American people have sent a clear message to the president: They are with him, and they are patient.
Bush’s message is stronger–to Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein–because he hasn’t quickly launched missiles. For all the hysteria among some allies and adversaries that Bush will shoot now and ask questions later, the president has done nothing of the sort. He has been deliberate, marshaling his forces while the government builds a case against suspects in last week’s attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
The fight will be waged against both terrorists and the states that give them safe haven–an assault in which the military will be just one arrow in a quiver of different options. Others will tighten the screws on the masterminds and foot soldiers of terrorism through economic, political, intelligence, covert and diplomatic means.
There are reports of disagreements in the Bush administration about how fast and how far to go with a response. It will do the U.S. no good to rush into missile strikes against the wrong enemy–or lash out, say, at Iraq. The U.S. won the Gulf War because it cornered and crushed a clearly defined enemy with the help of a broad-based international coalition. The same precision and support are required now.
The U.S. has had but 10 days to unravel a terrorist plan that took years to prepare. The evidence of terrorist Osama bin Laden’s complicity in the Sept. 11 terror is still developing, and some of it shows only circumstantial links between him and the 19 hijackers.
But there is no doubt on the complicity of bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organization in acts against the U.S. Intelligence has linked his network to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and last year’s bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
Make no mistake, a furious American response is inevitable. It will not be an act of vengeance, it won’t be an act of retribution. It will be a defense of this nation, which has been attacked and has suffered more than 6,000 casualties. As America methodically prepares its answer, those responsible for the terrible losses of Sept. 11 can contemplate what is to come.
