New Crises Sap Bush's War on Terror

Just as the White House claims that it has finally turned the corner in what it defines as the "central front" in the war on terror – Iraq – it has found itself desperately trying to contain new crises in the war's "periphery" stretching east to Pakistan, west to Turkey, and south to the Horn of Africa.

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's latest "coup d'etat" last weekend, combined with the continuing threat of a Turkish invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan and the looming probability of war between US-backed Ethiopia and Eritrea, have added to the growing impression here that Washington has ever more become hostage to forces and personalities far beyond its control or understanding.

The fact that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was reduced to making eleventh-hour telephone appeals to heads of state to heed Washington's wishes – in Turkey's case not to invade Kurdistan; in Musharraf's, not to declare a state of emergency – has only underlined just how impotent and unprepared the world's sole superpower appears to have become.

Worse, if they turn out badly, these crises could deal devastating setbacks to Washington's hopes of bolstering "moderate" forces against its perceived enemies, be they Sunni jihadists or the allegedly Tehran-led "axis" of Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. More...