America at War

...Others— like the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993—target civilians, reflecting a different strategy on the part of the attacker...

...Our very greatness, and the appeal of our principles rooted in our belief that every individual has inalienable political rights, pose a challenge to potential adversaries, and leave them little means of striking back...

...Some terrorist attacks—like that on the Cole or the bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, which killed 19 U.S...

...The general peace and prosperity of the post-Cold War world rest upon our preeminence...

...And when, inevitably, there comes a Khobar or Cole-style attack, the Defense Department retreats into denial, blaming the catastrophe on an "intelligence failure" or on the need to accommodate the political sensibilities of our regional allies...

...Navy vessel in a foreign port for what it obviously is: an act of war...

...But as the response to the attack on the USS Cole demonstrates, America's understanding of its new, quasi-imperial role in the world has failed to keep pace with events...

...But we could do worse than contemplate the wisdom, for example, of Sir Garnet Wolseley, who helped enforce Queen Victoria's Pax Britannica...

...It has distracted attention from essential distinctions among types of terrorist acts...

...constabulary missions abroad has increased dramatically—threefold, by Pentagon reckoning...

...These may be "non-state actors," but they benefit from state sponsorship, and they can form alliances of convenience with governments hostile to the United States or simply take advantage of weak or failing states...

...President Clinton described those who attacked the Cole as "cowardly...

...The alternative—terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and so on—can be effective in the short term and can sometimes even bring victory, as the North Vietnamese demonstrated...

...military forces...

...Not only are these anti-American warriors brave, they are increasingly well organized, well armed, and well trained...

...airmen— target U.S...

...In the process, they preserved their empire and secured decades of (mostly) peace and progress...

...In fact, their operation was clever and well planned, and it culminated in an extraordinary act of self-sacrifice and courage: According to news reports, the two commandos in the rubber boat stood to attention and saluted each other just before they detonated their explosives...

...The American response to these acts of war should be to use the instruments of war—intelligence gathering and military force—not only to avenge them and deter similar acts, but also to frustrate the political aims of our enemies...

...An American president these days has difficulty recognizing an assault on a U.S...

...Globalism," it turns out, favors not only international businessmen, but also international drug lords and guerrillas...

...Curiously, those most resistant to these lessons include the leaders of the U.S...

...The lessons may not be pleasant, from the vantage point of our politically correct time...

...Failing to see that we are at war, we also fail to see our enemies...

...The collapse of the Soviet empire ushered in a truly "unipolar moment...

...But there must be better ways of responding to these challenges...

...New information technologies, along with old-fashioned weapons proliferation, make the resort to violence both tempting and effective...

...And the proper response to today's unconventional assaults is seen to be legal and moral: Terrorists should be "brought to justice" and ethnic cleansers made to stand trial in the Hague...

...A conventional war against the United States is a losing proposition, as Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic discovered...

...But lumping together the wide variety of unconventional attacks Tom Donnelly is deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century...

...To them, constabulary duties are far less glamorous and honorable than the conventional wars they signed up for, and far more ambiguous...

...Likewise, in the 1993 battle of Mogadishu that killed 18 Army Rangers and ultimately drove Americans out of Somalia, hundreds, if not thousands, of Somalis were killed and wounded...

...Almost anything short of a conventional armored invasion across an international border is now regarded as terrorism, ethnic cleansing, or even genocide—something entirely irrational, as opposed to a calculated political act...

...Wolseley, like his contemporaries, was a man with few illusions, least of all that the cruel and bitter conflicts that marked his career were anything other than wars, and wars to be won...

...In planning a small war against an uncivilized nation," said Wolseley, "your first object should be the capture of whatever they prize most, the destruction or deprivation of which will probably bring the war most rapidly to a conclusion...

...Nor did he doubt that there would be casualties— indeed, the history of the British army in his day is largely a tale of massacres suffered and avenged...

...In the decade since, the frequency and duration of scattered U.S...

...The immediate reaction to the bombing of the Cole was telling...

...Some terrorist acts are the deeds of lone malcontents, like Timothy McVeigh or the Unabomber...

...BY TOM DONNELLY THE DUST FROM THE RUBBLE of the Berlin Wall had barely settled when, in December 1989, George Bush inaugurated the post-Cold War era by sending thousands of American Rangers and paratroopers to Panama to arrest a petty tyrant and drug dealer whose thugs had threatened U.S...

...Yet Wolseley, and his political masters, did not shy from playing the hand history had dealt them...

...As long as the unipolar moment lasts, then, unconventional attacks like that on the Cole or on the Khobar Towers or the ambush of the Rangers in Mogadishu will continue to punctuate the headlines...

...on Americans and U.S...

...By any measure of influence—political, military, economic, cultural—America stands alone...

...President Clinton denounced a "cowardly act of terrorism...

...interests under the rubric "terrorism" has created confusion...

...If these had been Americans laying down their lives, their story would be fit for a John Wayne movie...

...As a result, despite their frequency, the Pentagon has done almost nothing to adapt its operations, its forces, or its budgets to the new reality...

...These missions do not take place on a well-defined battlefield and drive to a clear end...

...The extent of American power and reach today is without historical precedent...

...Our military leaders cling to the mantra that their job is to fight the nation's wars, the neat and clean conventional wars they prefer...

...soldiers' lives...

...The first step is to recognize reality, and that includes recognizing who we are...

...We are more likely to succeed if we see that there are lessons to be learned from the unconventional wars fought by great powers in the past...

...our military forces should be employed in a disinterested, evenhanded way on "humanitarian" missions...

...armed forces, both in uniform and out...

...others are part of a coordinated long-term strategy in pursuit of a political agenda shared by a broad-based and determined enemy...