Many Decisions, Many Risks
Maintaining Global Coalition, Public Support Poses Big Challenge for Bush

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 25, 2001; Page A03

President Bush enjoys the support of a broad international coalition and an extraordinarily united country as he launches a war against terrorism. But as the campaign unfolds, almost every decision he makes could risk unraveling that coalition and eroding his political support at home.

As he moves from rhetoric to action, Bush faces an enormously difficult job managing the multiple aspects of the crisis, according to diplomatic, military and political analysts. They said he must balance the need to show progress in pursuing the terrorists with the patience required to preserve a coalition of countries with competing interests and their own internal pressures.

The risks ahead include possible new terrorist attacks here at home, public reaction to U.S. casualties once military strikes begin and worldwide reaction to possible civilian deaths inflicted by U.S. forces as they attempt to root out the terrorists. Bush has warned that this war will be long, often invisible and may not have a clear end. That means the public will have only a fragmentary sense of whether the war is being won, requiring creativity on Bush's part in keeping the country rallied.

Bush also faces likely resistance from other countries, particularly in the Muslim world, as the campaign expands beyond its initial targets -- the al Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

The question of whether to target Iraq, which has been the subject of debate inside the administration, has major consequences for Bush. Attacking Iraq could alienate much of the coalition Bush is assembling, but ignoring Iraq while concentrating on the bin Laden network could leave Saddam Hussein freer to cause trouble down the road.

The president's task is complicated by deepening economic problems at home, as the aftershocks of the attacks ripple through an already weak economy. The government has acted to financially assist the domestic airline industry. Bush will have to decide how aggressively to move to inject more money into the economy to restore consumer and business confidence.

If there has been a weakness in the president's team in the wake of the attacks, according to these analysts, it has been on the economic side. Rhetorical efforts by administration officials to boost economic confidence last week were trampled by reports of additional layoffs and the worst week on Wall Street since the 1930s. Bush used his radio address on Saturday to try to reassure Americans about the future of the economy, but so far he lacks a clear policy for dealing with this aspect of the crisis.

Public opinion experts said that, for the foreseeable future, Bush enjoys a free hand to lead wherever he wants to go. Eight in 10 Americans watched or listened to the president's speech before a joint session of Congress last Thursday, according to a Washington Post-ABC News Poll, and roughly nine in 10 surveyed said they approve of how he is handling the crisis.

That is a level of public support that his father did not reach until the end of the Persian Gulf War a decade ago. "We're dealing with some deep, deep scars from what happened" on Sept. 11, said pollster Ed Goeas. "People will be patient much longer than anyone assumes right now."

Bush hinted that military strikes could begin soon, but aides said he has concluded that the overwhelmingly positive reaction to his speech last week gives him the support he needs to chart the military campaign carefully and deliberately.

In the assessment of many European allies, Bush has passed a first critical test. The Europeans were nervous in the first days after the terrorist attacks that public outrage would force Bush to launch a quick and massive retaliatory strike. That, they feared, would fracture support for a prolonged and complex war against terrorism.

"The United States has to be smart in how it deals with allies," said retired general Wesley Clark, who commanded NATO forces in the war against Kosovo. "That's why there is talk of patience, why it's unfolding slowly, why you're not seeing immediate strikes."

As the military campaign begins, the immediate risks for Bush involve how he defines the initial target. Bush's speech suggested that he will limit the strikes to the bin Laden network and the Taliban leadership, but there was enough ambiguity in the speech to leave questions about how he intends to do that. How exposed will U.S. ground forces be, for example? And does the plan call for replacing the Taliban leadership?

The administration has been debating how large the overall military campaign should be, but by suggesting in his speech that the war will be carried out in phases, Bush appeared to signal a go-slow approach in an effort to maintain international unity. "If we overextend the target, we'll just have no support," said one former government official.

But even the goal of eliminating the al Qaeda network and perhaps the Taliban leadership carries significant military risks. Military experts say that while there are plenty of potential targets in Afghanistan, they are of relatively low value. A massive military strike in Afghanistan could satisfy public demands for retaliation, but it might rattle nervous allies without flushing bin Laden and his network.

"The risk is, how does he shape the first scene of this 20-act play," the former government official said. "My sense is he's preparing the public, that there is going to be a big first scene, but there is real risk in that."

Military experts said massive retaliation aimed at Afghanistan could result in sizable civilian casualties. "That's an important risk because we're not terrorists," Clark said. "We don't want to hurt the people of Afghanistan. They've suffered enough."

Bush has warned Americans to expect U.S. casualties in the coming conflict, and while there is evidence of a shift in public opinion on this question, it is far from clear how long it will last. One of Bush's challenges will be to persuade the country that the costs of the war on terrorism, both in terms of military casualties and future terrorist attacks at home, are worth sustaining.

Pollster Robert Teeter, who was a political adviser to Bush's father, said there is no way to predict how long public opinion will remain firmly on the president's side. "Let's say that over the next two or three years we have a number of military actions, maybe we have some casualties, maybe we have another terrorist attack or two," he said. "How does the public respond to that? This is really uncharted territory."

Holding the international coalition together poses other tests for the administration, with the danger of the United States overloading the circuits of moderate Arab states. Bush has said the coalition he is building here will not resemble that of the Persian Gulf War, and there are good reasons for that statement.

That coalition had a clear objective -- to eject the Iraqi army from Kuwait -- and other countries provided either military resources to help in the war effort or financial assistance to underwrite the cost. Here Bush will be asking for something more complex and over a longer duration, from sharing intelligence to closing borders to help in squeezing off the financial pipeline that sustains the terrorist networks.

For now partisanship has disappeared on Capitol Hill and around the country, but the debate over the economy or other matters could bring about clear divisions between Democrats and Republicans. Bush's leadership here will be as crucial as it is on the issue of how to fight the war on terrorism.

"He has a set of challenges like no president in this country has faced since the Second World War," said an official from a previous administration. "He does it from a spectacular base of support."

But the official said there is no predicting how the country will respond to an effort that has no quick beginning, long periods of invisible or no action and no obvious ending. "Sustaining that," he said, "is a very difficult job."