STANLEY CROUCH Only a global alliance will vanquish jihad

Thursday, Condoleezza Rice testified in Washington with the intent of removing all insinuations of blame for Sept. 11 from the Bush administration and the accusation that had the Bush administration been more focused on Al-Qaida, we might not have lost those nearly 3,000 lives. Perhaps, but early blunders are the first characteristics of the tragedy of war.
Neither the Clinton nor Bush administrations knew what the deal was. Both were too condescending to realize that we were facing more than a rambunctious cadre of radicals. These were and are men determined to take down the entire Western world.
The plans were never local. They murdered black Africans in bombing Kenya's American Embassy; they fought us in Somalia; they attacked an American ship and blew a hole in its side. Then we had Sept. 11.
We now see the world dimensions, trains bombed in Spain; the jihad terror manuals that propose an overthrow of secular governments the world over; and the people of London worrying as local, jihad-oriented clerics call for action.
Critical points
It all comes down to some central points. Technology sometimes makes the little man as formidable as the large man. Sept. 11 showed what 19 men could do if they used passenger planes as rockets. Al-Qaida has made clear the size of its destructive ambition by claims of trying to buy Russian suitcase bombs in the international nuclear black market.
Finally, we have seriously blundered in failing to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a step that would remove one of the Muslims' major justifications for jihad -- and for the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. There can be no argument there.
At this point, a strong argument against having gone into Iraq can be mounted -- but only as part of a better overall strategy to fight these soldiers of jihad. One could say that we should have finished off things in Afghanistan and kept together the alliance we had against the Taliban -- which included Russia, China, Europe, Pakistan and India. Ultimately, that is the alliance that will win the war against jihad.
Fatal flaw
These men of jihad are not flexible, and that is their fatal flaw. The people they truly trust are parallel fanatics. They hate both capitalism and communism, one for its extraordinary vulgarity, the other for its godlessness. As such, they are not politicians; they are inflamed ideologues. Those who think of them in political terms are off their rockers. Imagine Timothy McVeigh or a holy rolling murderer of abortion doctors and you will understand the types we face within the jihad wing of Islam.
Following terrorist Abu Nidal, these soldiers of jihad hope that secular governments will indiscriminately come down on enough Muslims to provoke the Islamic world to fight an international conflict, which it would surely lose. (Imagine what a truly riled up China could do by itself!) Our job is to win and to re-establish a worldwide alliance against a worldwide threat. It will be hard to do, but it has already been done. The war in Afghanistan is our model.
X Stanley Crouch is a columnist for the New York Daily News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.