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That's one reason why, last Monday, he appeared at the Islamic Center in Washington, and spoke of Islam as a "faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world." Islamic terrorists, he said before Congress, "are traitors to their own faith." The U.S. will not win Bush's war without intelligence on the names, places of refuge and financial support for terrorists — assistance that, in many cases, is available only in the Islamic world itself. Cooperation with Pakistan, at one and the same time a supporter and a victim of the Taliban, is essential if the mission is to be accomplished.
At the same time it looks for allies, the U.S. can't press too hard; this isn't a matter of building a war-fighting coalition of the kind arrayed against Saddam. With the Aqsa intifadeh still smoldering, it is intensely difficult for Arab regimes to be seen offering assistance to Washington. The Administration, says a senior White House official, recognizes that "everybody doesn't have to be involved in anything." But Washington has been worried by the response from Egypt, whose President, Hosni Mubarak, has been pleading for a U.N. conference on terrorism rather than for military strikes. American intelligence has picked up reports of a disturbing lack of support for Bush's policy.
Cooperation with Saudi Arabia, some of whose plutocrats salve a portion of their conscience by funding terror groups, is vital. Administration sources say that notwithstanding the hassle over the Riyadh air base, the overall tenor of discussions with the Saudis has been good. Iran, with whom Washington has had no official relations for 21 years, is suddenly useful; Tehran has more reason to loathe the Taliban than most. As TIME reported last week, Washington has used the British as a conduit to some moderate Iranians. Blair wrote to President Mohammad Khatami (they have since spoken) thanking him for his expression of sympathy after the attacks, and asking for his help in preventing any confrontation between religion and cultures. The British Foreign Secretary will visit Tehran this week. Iranian intelligence on Afghanistan would be useful; the right of American planes to overfly Iranian territory, though unlikely anytime soon, would mark the start of a new order in the region. Will it work? Hard-line Iranian religious leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei followed Khatami's expression of condolence with a chillier tone: "If we are supposed to condemn such deeds, which we must, we must condemn them everywhere."
There are geopolitical problems as well. Moscow has been supportive; last week Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, after meeting with Powell, said that "Russia and the U.S. have agreed to closely coordinate their actions." But the Russians remain determined that the U.S. should not use the crisis as an excuse to build permanent military bases in the region, and are making their views known in central Asia. China, with a potential Islamic insurgency of its own in Xinjiang, has no reason to stand in the way of the fight against terrorism; but Beijing is always anxious about the projection of American power close to its border. In a display of support so unprecedented it was shocking, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose nation did nothing but write a large check in support of the coalition during the Gulf War, deployed a destroyer to the Indian Ocean and promised a seven-point plan of assistance to Washington.