The deliberate and deadly attacks that were carried out against our country," President Bush said the day after the hijackers turned planes into missiles, "were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war." On cue, by Friday CNN was billing its coverage "America's New War," and Secretary of State Colin Powell was vowing that America would use "all the tools and weapons at our disposal" to fight it.
The rhetoric of war has always come trippingly off the tongue. But as soldiers know, the reality of war is a fog of confusion. And this war may be foggier than most. Nobody knows how to fight a global war against terrorists and those who harbor them--nobody has ever fought such a war before. As officials in Washington scrambled to assess their options last week, they faced questions unknown to their predecessors in high office: Who is our enemy? Where will the war's battlefields be?
To begin answering those puzzles, Bush and Powell last week set to work forging the sort of broad coalition--reaching from traditional allies like Britain to troubled states like Pakistan--that worked so well for George H.W. Bush during the Gulf War. As the week went on, there was a growing conviction in Washington that the U.S. can't win this war alone. "There's no serious unilateral option," said a senior Administration official. "You've got to involve others."
The President handled calls with friends such as the Presidents of France and Italy, and he spoke twice to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Powell and his staff handled the trickier negotiations. State Department sources tell TIME that the U.S. has asked Pakistan for use of its ports, the plainest indication that Washington intends a substantial military action against Osama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. Sources also tell TIME that the Administration is considering reaching out to both Libya and Iran for assistance, even though both nations have themselves sponsored terrorism in the past. The State Department, working through diplomatic routes established by Britain and another country, is trying to see if Iran's and Libya's somewhat supportive responses to the bombing can be turned into something concrete. "We are going to smoke them out a little bit on their statements," says a source. Through its intermediaries, the U.S. has conveyed the message to Tehran and Tripoli: "We appreciate what you said. Now what else are you going to do?"
For Powell, who had previously been shut out of the Bush Administration's control room, the crisis has provided the perfect opportunity to put himself at the center of policymaking. He is relishing the task. "The four stars are bulging out of his shoulders," says a State Department official. "Powell doesn't get into conflicts easily. But when he does, he wants to use overwhelming force." At news conferences throughout the week, the Secretary detailed an endless round of diplomacy: the first-ever commitment by NATO to activate Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which considers an attack on one member of the alliance as an attack on all; expressions of solidarity by foreign ministers from Italy to India; a warm letter from President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.