Few presidents have given a speech under the circumstances President Bush faced in his address to Congress, the nation and the world Thursday night. No president has ever risen to the occasion with more clarity and confidence. His closing words, “I will not yield, I will not rest, I will not relent,” left no doubt as to his commitment, or to the commitment he expects from Congress, the nation and the world.

Certainly, the speech served the broad purposes of expressing condolences to the grieving, gratitude to the heroes and resolve to the shaken. In less obvious ways, the speech also made some subtle and important diplomacy statements.

By directly naming Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group al Qaeda as the authors of last week’s attacks, Mr. Bush focused the still-forming coalition against terrorism on a single, limited target. Concentrating on the immediate threat and bringing to justice those responsible for the immediate crime compels the full cooperation by all civilized nations. By describing the dismantling of al Qaeda as but a first step – and by specifically naming other terrorist groups from Egypt to Uzbekistan – he sent a message to civilized nations that the task ahead will be arduous, and that it is a task that, once begun, must be carried through. To nations that sponsor terrorism, the message is that it will be an unrelenting campaign and to terrorists that jumping from one link in the global terrorism chain to another will offer no protection.

Though hardly the most trenchant line in the speech, “We will starve terrorists of their funding,” is a simple declaration fraught with meaning. The measure of whether a nation is against terrorism or an accomplice will not be merely whether it joins whatever military actions may be coming, but whether it cooperates in matters of civil law as they pertain to the private sector. Criminal enterprises have always taken advantage of banking secrecy laws – nations no longer can place the needs of their banks above the needs of humanity.

The section of the speech containing a list of demands made on the Taliban can be seen, on one level, as creating the conditions for rebuke – there simply is no way the leaders of that murderous regime will turn over bin Laden and all of his associates, and also allow U.S. troops to enter Afghanistan to tear down terrorist training camps. Combine that, however, with the Taliban’s absurd suggestion that it meets the standard for being a legitimate government by allowing bin Laden to leave Afghanistan if he so desires, and the conditions are set for negotiating. The final, take it or leave it, offer will be for the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and have at least a shot at survival. This is what Mr. Bush meant when he said the campaign will turn terrorist against terrorist.

The president’s words emphasizing that the United States has no cause against the Islam faith or against the Afghan people probably will not matter to those who hold power in Kabul – or Baghdad or Damascus – but they may well matter to the millions of innocent, peace-seeking people who are captives of those awful regimes. His statement that those who follow the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism “will follow that path all the way to where it ends, in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies” was a powerful line that will join the best of FDR or Lincoln.

It also is significant the Mr. Bush did not ask Congress for a declaration of war. This had been widely anticipated; that it did not occur keeps terrorists and their hosts guessing, it reduces their call for a “holy war” to a slogan. The complete avoidance of references to Pearl Harbor, of World War II or of other wars, is a signal to civilized people and to those who seek to tear civilization apart – what is coming will be different than anything that has come before.