Editorial: Terrorism menace must be eliminated

The United States has proved better than its critics in Western countries believed. It has not hit back in blind fury after the frightful events of September 11. It has waited nearly a month, preparing its case and conditioning Americans and their friends for a more comprehensive response and a different sort of war.

Nor has the Pentagon staged a display of firepower for the satisfaction of a country naturally thirsting for retaliation. The air strikes launched yesterday against the defences of the Taleban and terrorist command centres in Afghanistan were not a television spectacle. The campaign has started exactly as the President has repeatedly promised: it will not be highly visible and will not be confined to military operations.

Nor is it indiscriminate. The US and its allies have launched precision weapons against military installations, which distinguishes the action from the attack that has provoked it. The most offensive comments made since September 11 are those that equate the consequences of US military power with the terrorism directed at the World Trade Center.

There is a vast difference between the wilful slaughter of civilians and an action directed at military targets. If there are innocent casualties of this attack, the perennial critics of American policy will overlook the difference in intention. They will discredit only themselves.

The US has no illusions that stealth bombers and cruise missiles can find and destroy the enemy this time. Osama bid Laden's organisation has survived those weapons once before. To flush the al Qaeda out of Afghanistan is going to require operations on the ground, either an airborne assault or special forces capable of capturing or killing the key figures. It must be hoped that in the process they remove the Teleban, for the sake of millions of Afghans as much as the world at large.

Fortunately the US is by no means alone in this campaign. Britain, as always, is a companion at arms. Prime Minister Tony Blair has been a valuable voice of reason and resolve and a vital contributor to the coalition-building of the past few weeks. Germany and France were quick to endorse the strikes yesterday, as did Italy and Russia, who want the separatists in Chechnya classed as terrorists, too.

Also standing alongside the US, Mr Blair said yesterday, were Australia and Canada. Perhaps it was only in this country that our absence was noted, but here it was glaring. Whatever military assistance the New Zealand Government claims to have offered the allies, it seems to have gone unnoticed. The isolation to which recent defence policies have consigned us never has been more apparent.

Shortly after the first raids yesterday the allies began dropping packages of food and medicine to the people of Afghanistan. It is a gesture that should underline the fact that this war is not against them. Neither is it against the Arab world, nor Muslims everywhere. Iran and Iraq condemned the American raids yesterday, but elsewhere in the Middle East, allied diplomatic efforts appear to have made sure the motives for the action are appreciated.

And almost immediately the bombs fell, they brought a verbal response from bin Laden himself. In a pre-recorded broadcast through an Arabic television station, the suspected instigator of the events of September 11 gave the world an insight to evil. America, he said, had been "hit by God in one of its softest spots". America, he said, was "full of fear ... Thank God for that".

His broadcast was a godsend to his pursuers. The US has not published the evidence of his guilt but now it hardly needs to. His menace was displayed to all the world. He and his network must not escape this time.