The enlarging al-Qaeda front.(international politics)

GSTAAD, FEBRUARY 10

IF President Bush had had in hand the now-famous letter to the al-Qaeda leaders urging civil war in Iraq, would that have helped him in his encounter with Tim Russert on Meet the Press? Or for that matter, in his encounter with John Kerry later on this year in the presidential debates? The 17-page letter, presumed authentic, urges the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan to act through its operatives in Iraq, directing them to mobilize Shiite hostilities with the end of bringing on a civil war. There was an aside in that letter touching on the American role in Iraq. The Americans, the Islamic fundamentalist notes, are easy targets. However, "America has no intention of leaving, no matter how many wounded nor how bloody it becomes."

Mr. Bush would certainly have cited the letter as further documentation that the problem we face extends beyond what was once supposed to be nothing more than vindictive twitches by Saddam loyalists. The author of the letter proudly asserts that "he"--his unit of the fundamentalist resistance--can proudly take credit for 25 suicide bombers. Mr. Bush might have stressed that what Saddam Hussein had generated was perhaps not weapons of mass destruction measured in atoms or viruses or ricin, but weapons measured in a fanatical devotion to a cause. Muslim fundamentalism.

We are learning once again that a lesson in recent world history tells us that terrorist activity can succeed. One can say that eventually, as in the Philippines, it is overcome. That here and there it is carried on resulting in standstills, as in Israel. But there is always the prospect of winning, as in Cuba under Castro.

The al-Qaeda postulant correctly says that there is no prospect of a U.S. removal of our forces in Iraq, and Mr. Bush reiterated that so often as to give the impression that he wants Candidate Kerry to bounce off the same question: Is retreat conceivable? Likely?

The success of the terrorists in Iraq can be measured in ...