Poking the hornets' nest is ill-advised.

• Author: Eland, Ivan
• Position: Worldview - Provoking terrorist groups

IN RESPONSE to the cataclysmic terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Pres. George W. Bush rhetorically declared a worldwide war on terrorism. At first, the Bush Administration focused military, diplomatic, and financial pressure narrowly on Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which provided shelter and support to the network. For example, on Sept. 23, the Administration--by executive order--tightened financial sanctions on six terrorist groups, individuals, and other organizations affiliated with bin Laden's network.

It is critical that Washington show that any cataclysmic attack on the U.S. homeland will be met with a decisive response and that America eliminate the threat from the Al Qaeda network that is responsible. However, it is foolish to poke the hornets' nest unnecessarily by fighting a battle against many other terrorist groups on behalf of other nations. In addition, a focused approach prevents dissipating U.S. energy and attention from the main goal --eliminating bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Nevertheless, there are signs that the Administration may be losing that focus by broadening the American response to encompass terrorist groups that do not usually focus their attacks on U.S. targets.

On Nov. 2, under pressure from domestic interest groups, the Administration took the first steps to expand the war on terrorism to foreign terrorist groups that most likely had nothing to do with the attacks on Sept. 11. According to Joseph Kahn and Patrick Tyler of The New York Times, "The Bush administration imposed stringent financial sanctions ... on the anti-Israeli organizations Hamas and Hezbollah and 20 other suspected terrorist groups, significantly broadening the campaign to seize the terrorist assets beyond groups with links to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network."

The organizations included eight Arab groups not affiliated with Al Qaeda, three Colombian groups, two Greek groups, and Turkish, Kurdish, Israeli, Iranian, Tamil, Japanese, Peruvian, Irish, and Basque groups. Later, two Pakistani groups trying to wrest control of Kashmir from India were added to the list. Many of those have never focused their attacks on U.S. targets. Such expanded financial pressure could be followed by wider American diplomatic pressure, covert paramilitary operations, or overt military strikes.

Instead of fighting a war aimed at enhancing American security, the U.S. could find itself in a crusade to "eradicate terrorism" or "rid this world of evil and terror," to quote some of Bush's more-sweeping rhetorical flourishes. The President is not the only Administration official to indulge in such troubling rhetoric. Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated that it will be necessary "to go after terrorism wherever we find it in the world. It's a scourge, not only against the United States, but against civilization, and it must be brought to an end." Vice Pres. Dick Cheney has maintained that the U.S. must "make the world unsafe for terrorists." Still, a global war on terrorism is fraught with difficulties and may actually reduce American security.

Although it could be emotionally satisfying for the U.S. to conduct a global war against terrorism, the practicalities of doing so are daunting even for the world's sole superpower. Effectively targeting all 24 of the aforementioned additional groups around the world would exceed U.S. counterterrorism capabilities.

Unlike adversaries such as the former Soviet Union or rogue states, terrorists do not always have a clearly defined address. That has been truer than ever in the last decade of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. The sponsorship of terrorism by states has declined, and more free-flowing networks of cooperating terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda, are arising. Even if the U.S. had an adequate human intelligence program, such decompartmentalized networks of zealous terrorists would be hard to penetrate with U.S.-directed agents. American human intelligence capabilities were allowed to decline during and after the Cold War, when the U.S. relied...