No phony coalitions

(September 21) - Generals, it is said, always prepare to fight the last war. True to form, there has been endless talk of a "coalition" the United States is building, as if the Gulf War is being replayed. But this war requires a coalition even less than the last war, and certainly does not require inviting states that should be targets to be members.

The Gulf War coalition was largely a cosmetic coating for US and British military force. This coating, complete with a blessing from the UN Security Council to reverse Saddam Hussein's swallowing of Kuwait by "all necessary means," made sense because the US had not been directly attacked.

The situation now is completely different. More than 5,000 Americans have lost their lives. America's war against terrorism is a pure case of self-defense, for which permission is needed from no one.

That said, the Security Council has already passed a resolution that even Pakistan regards as sufficient authorization to use force against Afghanistan, and NATO has for the first time invoked Article 5 of its charter, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

Given the wave of support and sympathy for the United States, one might ask what harm there is in cobbling together a somewhat phony coalition, even if it is not necessary. The answer is that the knee-jerk assembly of a coalition could actually undermine America's ability to exercise its legitimate right of self-defense and confuse what this war is about: eradicating terrorism.

On September 11 a consensus was formed that should not be frittered away: If terrorism is legitimate anywhere, it is legitimate everywhere. Yesterday morning, after Yasser Arafat's sixth declared cease-fire, Sarit Amrani was gunned down by terrorists while driving with her husband and three children. Every human life is an entire world - terrorism is terrorism, whether one life is lost or 5,000.

It is not possible to compartmentalize terrorism and say that some perpetrators are targets and others are partners. It might be considered na夫e to say that the US, or the West, can tackle the entire web of terrorism and states that support it all at once. But it is even more na夫e to pretend that countries like Iran and Syria will do more than throw a few bones to the US in order to be "coalition" members in good standing.

If the formation of a coalition is to do more good than harm, then the first qualification for membership should be to stop supporting terrorism. At this moment, Iran still tops the State Department's list of states that support terrorism, and Syria is still on the list, for good reason. These countries should not be paid for doing them the favor of getting rid of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The price of legitimizing any state-supported terrorism is too high compared to any assistance they might give to an anti-Saddam effort.

The US should make clear to any country that wants to be on its side that it is willing to go it alone rather than water down what should be a "zero tolerance" standard toward terrorism. Part and parcel of this approach should be for the US not to hide Israel, its most natural ally in fighting terror.

The US should accept the fact that the Arab and Islamic rejection of Israel is just a particularly intense extension of animosity toward the United States. Lack of support for, or defensiveness toward, Israel is considered weakness, pure and simple. The Arab demands to pressure or sideline Israel as a condition for helping the US should be rejected as relics of the pre-September 11 world - a world in which state-supported terrorism and anti-Israel boycotts were tolerated.

Either Israel is an illegitimate colonial implant, as the Arab rejectionists believe, or it is an outpost of the free world, battling for survival in a sea of hostile dictatorships. Coddling the former view will not win friends and influence people in the Arab world - unabashedly standing by a true ally will.