PANCHO AND OSAMA

An adviser for Republican presidential candidate John McCain recently accused McCain’s Democratic rival Barack Obama of holding a “Sept. 10 mind-set.” Translation: Sen. Obama has a naive view of the nature of the world, a view that should have changed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Prompting the charge was Sen. Obama’s recent remarks in which he spoke approvingly of the successful prosecution of those who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

This is more than routine political sparring. The comments from the McCain and Obama camps suggest two very different views of the seminal event for U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century.

One view, which continues to inform the Bush administration’s policies, casts the Sept. 11 attacks as part of religious war against the West. The Bush administration says the struggle is global in scope and may last decades, like the Cold War. And just as the Cold War’s focus was on ideology – communism – the “global war on terror,” as President Bush calls it, is also on an idea: a radical interpretation of Islam.

Sen. McCain seems to accept this view.

Sen. Obama suggested the response to the 1993 World Trade Center attack is more appropriate – the perpetrators were tracked down, arrested and prosecuted. “They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated,” Sen. Obama said. “And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world and given a huge boost to terrorist recruitment in countries that say, ‘Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims.'”

These two views of terrorism bring very different results. The “global war” approach brought the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which had more to do with showing the world the U.S. was willing to put boots on the ground than it was about weapons of mass destruction.

By contrast, the criminal justice approach might have resulted in an all-out offensive on al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban government of Afghanistan for supporting the terrorist group. The benefits of that approach: Millions of Muslims would not feel targeted, the U.S. would have a more favorable image among friendly nations, and al-Qaida might be fatally wounded.

It’s an approach the U.S. has used before. In 1916, Mexican revolutionary Gen. Pancho Villa and 1,500 of his troops crossed the border and attacked a town in New Mexico in retaliation for a bad deal on an arms purchase. President Woodrow Wilson dispatched Gen. John Pershing and 6,000 troops to Mexico in pursuit of Gen. Villa. He wasn’t captured, but he lost stature and was assassinated in 1923.

President Wilson did not invade Cuba to send a message to General Villa’s followers. Had President Bush singularly focused military resources on bin Laden, he might have been apprehended by now. The message would be clear to those who want to kill Americans: You will be tracked down, captured and held accountable for what you have done, not what you believe or think.

It’s a different approach, but it narrows the target and vastly improves the odds of striking it. That’s post-Sept. 11 thinking.