PRE-EMPTING PERIL

PRE-EMPTING PERIL
Chicago Tribune: For most of its history, the United States' defense policy has been, well, defensive. This country's major wars have not been motivated by imperial domination or territorial conquest. Like many a Western hero, Americans have taken the attitude that we don't start fights -- we finish them.
That policy was tested by the special dangers of the nuclear age. But in the end, the United States forestalled Soviet aggression by doing two things: demonstrating its unflagging readiness to fight a conventional war if our European allies were attacked, and maintaining a robust nuclear arsenal that could answer a conventional or nuclear attack.
Containment and deterrence are policies with long track records of success. But a new era can't necessarily rely on the methods of the last war. The rise of transnational terrorist movements neither answerable to nor controlled by any government presents vastly different challenges.
In that respect, President Bush deserves credit for his new emphasis on pre-empting threats to our security. He outlined the new approach in a recent speech at West Point, declaring, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. ... We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge."
There is considerable wisdom in this approach. The Al-Qaida operatives who planned and carried out the Sept. 11 attacks -- and previous attacks against U.S. targets abroad -- couldn't be contained the way the Red Army was. There was no front where we could mass troops and armor to meet the invaders.
Nor could they be deterred by the threat that we would destroy them. In fact, they undertook their missions in the certainty of dying. And their leader, Osama bin Laden, and his Taliban patrons imagined themselves beyond the reach of American military power.
Knowing what we know now, it would have made perfect sense for the U.S. to mount an invasion of Afghanistan before Sept 11. Instead, Washington sat by while the terrorists proceeded with a war that we failed to recognize.
Kill the snake
If bin Laden's legions manage to relocate and resume business in some other lawless, ungoverned place in Pakistan, Somalia or elsewhere, the president must be ready to kill the snake before it can strike. If a foreign government harbors or assists terrorists plotting action against American targets, it should be treated as having declared war on the United States.
The unanswered question is what the new doctrine means for Iraq. Many administration officials openly favor taking military action to remove Saddam Hussein, but despite his aggressive rhetoric, the president has given no clear signal of his plans. If Hussein were found to have played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, of course, going after him would qualify more as retaliation than pre-emption, and few Americans would question it.
But attacking him to pre-empt him from getting and using weapons of mass destruction is harder to justify. Hussein, after all, was deterred from using chemical and biological weapons during the Persian Gulf War, and he has been contained by the resolute application of American power.