AN UNFINISHED WAR

In the past year, President Bush has led the nation in a courageous and cool-headed campaign to destroy the terrorist conspiracy that mounted the terrorist attacks of a year ago and destroy the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that had sheltered Osama bin Laden and his murderous organization. Mr. Bush built an international coalition to help invade Afghanistan, hunt down remnants of the network, root out terrorist cells in other countries and cut off the flow of money and supplies that fed the conspiracy.

But the job is far from finished. The location of Osama bin Laden, whom Mr. Bush ordered brought in dead or alive, remains a mystery. His string of safe houses and training camps have been broken up and his henchmen are on the run, but al-Qaida still organizes isolated local terrorist attacks. U.S. experts don’t rule out its ability to mount another major attack, such as crippling a major American seaport like Boston or Seattle.

What’s left of Mr. bin Laden’s terrorist conspiracy still constitutes a “clear and present danger.” That phrase was enunciated by the great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1919, an another era when the safety and even the existence of the United States seemed threatened. Then, the threat was subversive speech. Justice Holmes was willing to accept restrictions on First Amendment freedoms if subversive speech met that test. The same test can tell us whether to fight a war.

Today, President Bush is trying to persuade the American people and the international community that Saddam Hussein also presents a clear and present danger, justifying a war to overthrow him. Mr. Bush has the remarkably unanimous support from his top officials. Others, including most foreign governments and some leading congressional Republicans and top officials of his father’s administration, say he has not yet made the case. They call the administration’s focus on Iraq a distraction from the campaign against terrorism.

Sen. Bob Graham, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, told The New York Times that Iraq should not be a priority under President Bush’s own criteria: countries that were accomplices in the Sept. 11 attacks or provided sanctuary for terrorist groups. “By those two standards, Iraq does not make it very high on the list of a terrorist state,” Mr. Graham said. Instead of going after Iraq, he urged hardening possible future terrorist targets, notably the nation’s seaports, and, more importantly, an offensive against the remaining terrorists – “going to where the terrorists are and aggressively taking them on.” He warned that “victory in the war against terrorism will not be won on the defensive, by building castles around our vulnerabilities.”

Sen. Graham proposed a new focus on Syria, Syria-controlled areas of Lebanon, and Iran, where al-Qaida has many operatives and training camps. Specialists also report a flow of al-Qaida groups back into Afghanistan and Pakistan border areas.

Unless the Bush administration can document its assertions that Saddam may soon have nuclear weapons and missiles that could be fired at the United States, the administration should finish the war against terrorism before starting a new war against Iraq.