America Fights Back
Clinton raises the stakes in the war against terrorism
To the world, President Clinton seemed consumed by his well-known personal problems. Yet as he strode pensively on the grounds of a Martha's Vineyard estate with his dog, Buddy, last week, the president pondered other events known only to a handful of his closest advisers. U.S. intelligence agents had already decided that the August 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were the work of Osama bin Laden, the wealthy scion of a Saudi construction magnate, who had been kicked out of his native country in 1991 for radical leanings. Meanwhile, on seven U.S. warships in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, weapons specialists were plotting the flight paths of dozens of cruise missiles targeted at complexes in Sudan and Afghanistan linked to bin Laden. Then, according to Clinton administration officials, came secret intelligence information that bin Laden's forces planned to carry out further acts of terror against Americans, perhaps within days.
The resulting U.S. action--Operation Infinite Reach--amounted to one of the most decisive attacks against suspected terrorists in years. More than 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles shattered buildings at a sprawling base about 90 miles south of Kabul, Afghanistan, that U.S. officials said was used to train terrorists. Some of bin Laden's lieutenants and associates were probably killed, though bin Laden himself evidently survived. An additional six Tomahawks slammed into a suspected chemical weapons plant in Khartoum, Sudan, virtually destroying it. Perhaps more significantly, the strikes signaled a new aggressiveness in dealing with those who wish harm upon America and its citizens. "There are no expendable American targets," Clinton said sternly from the Oval Office, after returning to Washington briefly to meet with his national-security team. "There will be no sanctuary for terrorists."
Despite the show of force that backed that rhetoric, Clinton's strategy of raising the stakes for terrorists is risky. Government leaders were quick to caution that the strikes themselves could prompt further terrorist attacks, either by bin Laden's organization or by others who sympathize with him. It is "very important for the American people to understand . . . that there may in fact be retaliatory actions," said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. After the strikes, government officials said an unprecedented number of threats poured into U.S. embassies and other outposts. Bin Laden himself pledged further attacks, telling a London newspaper through a spokesman that "the battle has not yet started." Even if imminent attacks are foiled, terrorists can be patient and persistent. The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 is widely believed to have been an act of revenge for the U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986, itself retaliation for a terrorist incident in Berlin a week earlier.
Using million-dollar weapons to take down a bunch of unfortified buildings in the Afghan hill country also puts the prestige of American power on the line. Cloudy skies over Afghanistan obscured initial pictures taken by U.S. reconnaissance satellites, making it difficult to assess the extent of damage there. But a senior defense official said early returns showed that "some buildings sustained meaningful damage. We missed some others." If the damage turns out to be light enough that bin Laden is able to reconstitute his organization quickly, his following among anti-American Muslims in the Middle East could rise.
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