By Michael Gordon
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — When President Bush and his top aides talk about military action to end Afghanistan’s support for terrorism, they are focusing on attacks to punish the Taliban and undermine their control over the country, not on a full-scale American occupation.
No war plan appears to have been agreed upon, and officially, the Bush administration insists that no options have been excluded.
The administration, however, is preparing a powerful military strike if the Taliban, as expected, refuses to hand over the terrorist bin Laden and shut down his terrorist network.
The blow would be intended not only to destroy terrorist bases in Afghanistan but to demonstrate to other nations that there is a heavy cost to be paid for regimes that shelter enemies of the United States.
A principal option is to intervene militarily in Afghanistan’s civil war on the side of the Taliban’s foes: the beleaguered Northern Alliance, which claims just a sliver of Afghanistan’s territory. It has just been weakened further when its leader died after a suicide bomb attack committed just days before the raids in New York and Washington, D.C.
At the same time, the United States would apply additional pressure, for example, by persuading Pakistan to stop shipments of fuel to its neighboring Afghanistan.
Such steps may fall short of a knockout blow to the Taliban. Complicating the administration’s planning, the element of surprise has been lost. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s men are expecting a bombing attack and have been evacuating their camps and bases, according to U.S. intelligence.
But there is a recognition that to go further by invading and occupying Afghanistan with thousands of U.S. troops would place the United States at odds with much of the Islamic world and is fraught with enormous dangers.
The administration seems to be grappling for a plan involving air power, and potentially ground troops, that is more forceful than the cruise missile strike that the Clinton administration launched in 1998 against bin Laden in Afghanistan, with little effect, but that is less than the huge air and ground offensive that the United States launched in the Persian Gulf War.
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