Protracted war tests US resolve

Washington

The overriding lesson from this week in the "war" on terrorism may be that Americans need to prepare themselves for a conflict that - in terms of length, if not cost - will be unrivaled since the US pulled out of Vietnam nearly 30 years ago.

True, from Day 1, President Bush and his national-security coterie have been telling Americans that the fight will not be over anytime soon. It will have to be fought on many fronts. The costs could be high, including more attacks on the US. And victories - to the extent that they are publicly revealed at all - could be years in coming.

Yet the reality behind the official Washington rhetoric is just beginning to set in, as the military campaign completes its third week, and the news from both the battlefield of Afghanistan and the battlefield of America shows the difficulties in quelling an elusive band of terrorists.

Among the challenges now becoming more obvious:

• The appearance that the US is losing the battle for hearts and minds, as almost daily reports of

bombing errors and civilian casualties mount.

• The complexities of finding political stability in a post-Taliban Afghanistan.

• The approach of the region's brutal winter and the Muslim holy days of Ramadan.

• What looks increasingly like a state-based anthrax attack on Americans that many officials here believe could be tied to the Sept. 11 hits on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

All this will test the Bush administration's ability to convince Americans, notorious for their short attention span, to stay committed to what could become a "perpetual war," going on for years. At the moment, US public resolve remains high.

"Support for military retaliation is so strong that the possible consequences of going to war - at this point - clearly don't outweigh the public's determination that it is the right thing to do," says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup poll. "Question after question in poll after poll has put in front of the American public ideas about what a real war might entail in terms of human and financial consequence. In response after response, the public perseveres in its support for retaliation."

For example, says Mr. Newport, "this past weekend, we asked about the possibility of up to 5,000 military or civilian deaths resulting from military action, and found that three-quarters or more of those interviewed still supported the concept of a military response, even in the face of these types of casualties."

The Pentagon this week seemed to make a point of trying to lower expectations. At a Defense Department briefing, spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, who works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked what he'd learned about the strengths and the vulnerabilities of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.

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