A wartime window of opportunity: the regimes in Iraq and Iran are ripe for change, and defense experts say the strategy known as the Bush Doctrine must take full advantage before it's too late

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 4, 2002 | by J. Michael Waller

Osama bin Laden and his forces are not the most dangerous terrorist power out there, and the circumstances are aligning to give President George W. Bush a once-in-a-lifetime chance not only to wipe out international terrorist groups but the regimes that sponsor them. "I hope 2002 is a year of peace," the president told reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. "But I am also realistic." The president knows there can be no peace until terrorism and its backers are gone.

The Taliban militia and the al-Qaeda terrorist infrastructure have been dismembered in Afghanistan, but U.S. planners are continuing to map a comprehensive strategy to root out terrorists abroad and defend the American people and their way of life. The emerging strategy is coming to be known as the Bush Doctrine. The planning is heavily compartmented and far from finished, with the planners themselves only beginning to comprehend the scope of the "new kind of war" of which the president has spoken since Sept. 11.

The war will be costly. The aftermath of the September attacks has cost $60 billion so far, plus another $20 billion in increased defense spending. That's a drop in the bucket compared with what this war will cost, and the president knows it. "I said to the American people that this nation might have to run deficits in time of war, in times of national emergency or in times of a recession," Bush told reporters during a Jan. 7 meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. "And we're still in all three," he added. "We had a national emergency; we're trying to win a war; and we're in a recession. So I have no problem figuring out ways to win the war, figuring out ways to protect the homeland, and those will be the priorities of my budget."

Interviews with U.S. officials, independent defense experts and foreign authorities indicate that the war on terrorism will take place on more fronts than previously envisioned and in ever-more-imaginative ways. The White House now says that 111 countries have assisted in the fight so far, a veritable World War III. Even in the best of conditions, such coalitions don't last, and they aren't intended to in the current fight. Nevertheless, the administration is under tremendous pressure to limit options that would risk undermining worldwide support. The greatest pressure concerns what to do with regimes that sponsor terrorism, specifically those of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Cuba and North Korea.

That pressure, if not resisted, not only could kill the Bush Doctrine but undermine the very goal of fighting international terrorism and keeping the homeland safe and secure, say concerned experts.

With the biggest part of the Afghanistan war apparently concluded, Bush is at a crossroads, for most of the terrorist regimes just happen to be developing their own programs to produce and stockpile weapons of mass destruction. These weapons programs -- biological, chemical, radiological and nuclear -- pose a clear and present danger to the United States and its allies. Traditional methods such as negotiations, diplomacy, sanctions and arms control -- all means still favored by the foreign-policy and business establishments -- have failed completely, critics say. This is why the president's national-security team is devising more assertive and creative measures.

INSIGHT has pieced together how the United States intends to carry the war around the world and secure the homeland from future attacks. What emerges looks much like a modernized Reagan Doctrine, which was designed to do away with the Soviet threat by supporting democratic opposition movements and even armed resistance forces to undermine the Soviet Union and its far-flung empire.

In the near term, expect the United States to go after what Pentagon officials call the "low-hanging fruit." These are targets that can be neutralized with minimal effort and expense in lawless places with weak militaries, such as Somalia and Yemen, and in friendly countries in need of U.S. help, such as the Philippines, whose major southern island of Mindanao is home to Islamic terrorists tied to al-Qaeda. Those efforts would be relatively uncontroversial at home and abroad. Insiders tell INSIGHT that Washington will in any case continue to aid the willing and prod the reluctant to close down terrorist operations, arrest or otherwise neutralize terrorist leaders and even wage full-scale military operations against terrorists on their own soil.

"The lower-hanging fruit is nice, but Somalia and Yemen and Mindanao don't have weapons of mass destruction," says David Isby, a Washington-based defense and foreign-policy analyst. The focus, he says, should be on terrorist regimes that have developed biological and chemical weapons and are developing nuclear arms. "This is a key issue," Isby insists. "Saddam's great danger is his ability to inflict casualties. He is doubtlessly investing to get more."

Some Iraq experts argue that time is running out to stop Saddam Hussein and others before they use a weapon of mass destruction or deploy a missile capable of firing one at the United States. Laurie Mylroie, author of a widely praised book about Iraq's involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City, recently rereleased as The War Against America, is one of them. Mylroie is blunt: "We've got to get rid of Saddam," she says. "He lives for revenge against us. He has gotten away with repeated terrorist attacks against the United States." Strong circumstantial evidence points to Iraq's sponsorship of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and operational influence if not control over Mohammed Atta, the apparent chief of the Sept. 11 hijackings. Mylroie tells INSIGHT that the Czech secret service's report that Atta met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent whom the Czechs deported for plotting terrorist attacks further points the finger at Saddam. "He's in a blood feud with the U.S." she says.