After the battle: What next?

As American and British aircraft strike military targets throughout Afghanistan in a campaign to destroy al-Qaida and the Taliban, it's worth asking what comes next. For some, including perhaps President Bush, the battle is over once Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida network have been "brought to justice." In his remarks on Thursday, the president hinted that if the Taliban were to hand over bin Laden and his henchmen, the United States might offer the Taliban "a second chance."

Victory in this war that was so brutally thrust upon us may be more complicated than the destruction of a particular terrorist network. As much as we want to see bin Laden brought to justice, it's important to recognize that the war on terrorism cannot be about justice. There can be no justice for the victims of Sept. 11; no punishment can match the enormity of the crimes. Instead, the war's aims must be limited to security: ending our fear of hijackers, bombings and anthrax.

Bringing Osama bin Laden to justice will not make Americans appreciably safer. He is just a symptom. Those who oppose American action in Afghanistan correctly argue that terrorism has root causes external to individual ringleaders like bin Laden. They also correctly argue that any U.S. policy that seeks to end the threat of terrorism must resolve its underlying causes.

Therefore it is crucial that American involvement in Afghanistan not cease once bin Laden and most of his henchmen are dead or in custody. If the war becomes a kind of police chase in jet aircraft, we can be sure of continued attacks on the United States by new terrorists with similar motivations.

Instead, we must set ourselves a bigger goal. We must address those root causes of terrorism so that the same set of geopolitical, ideological and cultural factors that created bin Laden never produce another maniac to replace him. Islamic fundamentalism, a perversion of a great and noble faith, heads the list of these root causes. It is an ideology utterly incompatible with the free society led by the United States and existing in much of the Islamic world. We must win an ideological battle against Islamic Fundamentalism, as we did against Nazism and communism.

So far, so good, but what does fighting Islamic Fundamentalism rather than fighting particular groups of fundamentalists mean? It means strongly supporting moderate governments in the Middle East and applying diplomatic pressure to reach a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian question.

In Afghanistan, it means getting rid of groups like the Taliban, whose avowed mission is to spread the kind of bloodthirsty and barbarous medieval ideology that produces Osama bin Laden, massive atrocities against civilians and jihad against the United States.

However, the real fight against an evil ideology can never be a war of bombs and bullets but must instead be a struggle of examples and ideas about human welfare and dignity. Overthrowing the Taliban is simply a precondition to showing our example by building infrastructure, a legitimate, heroin-free economy, coeducational schools and a multi-ethnic government in Afghanistan.

Those who reply that this would be a difficult task state the obvious, but those who label it impossible missed the way in which President Clinton used American leadership to bring peace and security back to the former Yugoslavia and to calm ancient ethnic hatreds. Without U.S. leadership it is almost inevitable that the United Nations and Europe would have fumbled the ball, and the Balkans would continue to be a place of genocide and horror for years to come. Strong reservations on how much we would spend in blood or treasure limited our nevertheless successful humanitarian intervention in the Balkans. Potential nation building in Afghanistan is quite different. In this case, our actions depend not on humanitarian grounds alone, but on our basic national security.

In the long run, nation building in Afghanistan would be enormously beneficial. There is an objective good in feeding the hungry, particularly in a nation where one in three children is an orphan. The humanitarian benefits of a peaceful and stable Afghanistan, rid of the Taliban, are immeasurable. There are yet other benefits. Nation building also proves that our intentions were as we said, that our war is against terrorism, neither against Islam nor against the people of Afghanistan. There can be no better proof than our direct assistance as we help them to rebuild their shattered nation. Additionally, it is not insignificant that a friendly and United States-backed Muslim state in Central Asia would be in our strategic interest.

But the most important reason to involve the United States in nation building in Afghanistan is a simple one. It keeps us safe. Taking the lead in rebuilding Afghanistan means a real victory — not just in military terms, but in ideological ones as well. It means supplanting the fanaticism of bin Laden and the Taliban with alternatives that are better both for the United States and for the Afghan people. Nation building offers the firmest justification for our military action, proving that our involvement in Afghanistan is not mere revenge, but a constructive and far-sighted policy consistent with America's role as a great and enlightened power. Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky is from New York, NY. He can be reached at cr@princeton.edu.