Dr. Rand H. Fishbein is President of Fishbein Associates, Inc., a public-policy consulting firm based in Potomac, Maryland. fishnet@pipeline.com
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If the commentators and the politicians are correct, the attack that brought down New York's twin towers and destroyed a wedge of the Pentagon also jolted this generation of Americans into a new and uncomfortable reality. We have discovered that the U.S. is not only part of a wider world, but a tableau for its struggles and its rage as well.

No longer safe from terrorism, the American people have been stirred to action. Their words of defiance echo across the centuries as the country girds for another war. The chant "Remember the Twin Towers," can now be added to those similar cries that once moved a nation: "Remember the Alamo!" "Remember the Maine!" "Remember the Lusitania!"

And what is the likely outcome of America's new found resolve? It will probably be frustration and almost certainly, more sorrow. For the sobering truth is that even as Washington prepares to launch its first retaliatory strikes it is clear that there is no quick solution to the terrorist problem. Even Secretary Rumsfeld concedes this when he notes that the threat resides in fifty or sixty countries. Clearly, the U.S. cannot, and will not, use force against each one.

Tracking down and eliminating Osama Bin Laden and his followers will not be easy. The tentacles of this problem appear to stretch to Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt and the senior levels of the Pakistan government. Conflicts like World War II, the Gulf War and even Vietnam offer no real guide as to how this campaign must be waged. The drug war, mounted across a hundred lines of attack, is probably the closest paradigm. Yet, unlike the drug war, the fight against terrorism could prompt retaliation with chemical, biological or even radiological weapons.

The world's terrorist network is a hydra. Any attack upon one appendage will surely engender a painful response. New terrorist cells are likely to spring from the old. We must be prepared for this, and for the fact that growing up now, in the squalor of Cairo's teeming suburbs, the tenements of Beirut and the alleys of Peshawar, is a younger generation for whom our attacks will become the defining moment of their lives. So it has been ever since the cycle of violence began. Just ask the Israelis.

But this does not mean that we should capitulate. We should strike back and strike hard. The terrorists are vulnerable, and they can be brought to heel. But it will not be through a short series of reprisal actions or the maintenance of large forces in and around their strongholds.

The key will be sustained pressure on both our enemies and friends -- not for months or years, but permanently. Those who give safe haven or support to terrorist networks must bear the consequences of their actions. This means even our European allies should face sanctions if their companies or citizens demonstrate a pattern of complicity. If history is any guide, allied cooperative spirit is likely to be short-lived. But Washington's resolve must not be.

The reality of terrorists willing to die for their cause is not new and should not frighten the American public into resignation. It must be remembered that for every suicide bomber there are even more operatives for whom dying is inconceivable. Those who order such attacks often have grander plans. Many hope to seize national power. Some seek notoriety. Others have responsibilities to their families or their clans, which they are unwilling to forsake. An element is simply psychopaths.

Those who ordered the suicide attacks on September 11th have every intention of benefiting from the battles waged on their behalf. What makes them vulnerable is that they are curiously unwilling to die for their own cause. As with Mafia dons, they are never the ones to pull the trigger and are always sure to be far from the scene of their crimes.

The goal of America's leaders should be to ferret out the planners, the inspirational leaders, and the complete support system upon which terrorists depend. Beyond closing training camps and seizing property, the U.S. must threaten tribal leaders, humiliate clan chieftains, target clerics who preach violence, disrupt the dissemination hateful literature, and punish businessmen who channel funds to terrorists or establish companies behind which they operate.

With the danger posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the ease with which some can be made, the U.S. must perform more rigorous background checks on all foreigners entering its scientific institutes. Restrictions must be placed on students whose governments have not fully cooperated in the anti-terrorist fight.

Adoption of the Israeli policy of targeted assassination may be one of the only ways to cripple the terrorist infrastructure, instilling the same fear in them that they have instilled in us. Perhaps now Washington will halt its condemnation of Israel's surgical methods and realize that fire can only be fought with fire. This is not a game for the faint-hearted. It leaves no clean hands.

What complicates the American response to terrorism is that those who despise our way of life are using the very tools, technologies and freedoms that we hold dear to undermine and demoralize us. No longer relegated to the margins of the world community, terrorists like Osama Bin Laden and his sympathizers in Al Qaida, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, and the PLO, have been able to muster the wealth and power necessary to project their war to our shores. They have learned that the giant across the sea has brittle bones and imperfect vision and can be challenged on his home ground as well as abroad. Terrorism, they believe, is the great equalizer among nations.

The fact is that when the U.S. had the opportunity to strike a blow against terrorism in the person of Yasser Arafat, President Clinton and his advisors chose not too, opting instead to legitimize an individual who continues to preach violence toward a close U.S. ally and has personally ordered attacks that have killed Americans, including the both the U.S. Ambassador and Charge d'Affaires to Khartoum in 1973.

Even now, after a year that has seen a relentless campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings and sniper attacks against civilians, the U.S. State Department still counsels appeasement and restraint. If Washington is truly committed to entering the fight against terrorism, it cannot be selective in its condemnation.

As the United States girds itself for a struggle that is likely to define American foreign policy well into the new century, we would do well not to lose perspective on the nature of the threat. While Osama Bin Laden may hold the element of surprise, he by no means holds all of the cards. He is not the only enemy. America, the terrorists will learn, has a long reach and is not afraid to use it. As an old British battle cry goes:

We don't want to fight,
But by jingo if we do,
We've got the ships,
We've got the men,
We've got the money too.

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.

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