The battle to frame the battle

Meanwhile, inside the Taliban's consulate in Peshawar, officials sipped tea early Monday morning and spoke by radio to their colleagues, who were under attack from US fighter bombers and cruise missiles. They say that several "jihad training camps" had been the target of some of the attacks, which were spread across the country.

"The morale of the Taliban on the inside remains strong - it is not sinking," says the senior Taliban consul in Peshawar. "The jihad will continue."

Monday's street clashes could be only the beginning of a dangerous polarization of Muslim populations that could end up threatening moderate regimes friendly with the West, Mr. Telhami says. He points to clashes Monday in Gaza between Palestinian supporters of the Hamas organization and Palestinian authorities as a worrisome harbinger of what might be ahead. At least two Palestinians are reported to have died in those clashes.

The cultural divide was beginning to show in other countries as well.

In Morocco, a staunch US ally that participated in the US-led Gulf War coalition in 1991 offered its support to the US, saying the "kingdom of Morocco expresses its attachment to a measured and wise drive of [military ] operations in Afghanistan," according to Reuters. But Morocco's Islamist groups criticized the US action. "America's war machine has begun a clear aggression on poor Muslim people of Afghanistan to punish them for a crime that was committed by a small group," said Mustapha Ramid, coordinator of the Nationalist Islamic Congress.

Whether the population will heed sometimes ambiguous governments or religious leaders will be important in Muslim countries. But in the West, leaders expressed little ambiguity.

Canadian leader Jean Chretien praised both the balance of the US response and Bush's global leadership, while French president Jacques Chirac expressed support for the raids by emphasizing the repressive nature of the Afghan regime - a message that plays well with the French population ambivalent about military strikes.

Still, some worry that the widespread dissemination of bin Laden's words, the first graphic installment in the propaganda war, make the "war" more difficult to win.

"We never saw Hitler making his speeches except in newsreels. Here you have bin Laden on everybody's television set," says Henry Graff, a history professor and presidential scholar at Colombia University in New York. "The propaganda is being spread all over the world by American television, by world television."

Telhami says the US inclusion of humanitarian assistance makes a "moral statement" that some ambivalent Muslims will hear, but he says the battle for minds that is now under way must become something much more broad and long term. "This will have to be an international effort that goes deeper to address the ills that are at the root of so much despair in the region," he says.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3