LOS ANGELES: No matter what happens in the coming weeks and months to Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban or the luckless refugees of Afghanistan, the first casualty of the War on Terrorism has already been bagged and tagged. The identity of the deceased: US foreign policy.

In discussing the US response to the attacks of Sept 11, officials of George W. Bush’s administration and the armed forces repeatedly and exclusively described their actions as a War on Terrorism. This term of engagement has undoubted benefits of a political-propagandistic nature, but they are unlikely to make up for the damage done by such a sloppy justification of what is, after all, a world war.

If the US insists on calling its campaign against the Sept 11 killers a war on all terrorism - not just certain terrorists - it must wind up with one of two unhappy outcomes: to shackle its conduct of foreign policy hopelessly or else be regarded as the world’s most heavily armed hypocrite.

US relations with the rest of the world evolved through the course of world wars, hot and cold, from George Washington’s dread of ‘foreign entanglements’ to the understanding that Washington, had an interest in the outcome of most of the world’s national struggles. Following the dictum of that great nation-builder, Cardinal Richelieu, that “states have no principles, only interests,” the US has in the past 50 years given material support and comfort - or at least tacit approval - to dozens of terrorist organizations whose targets were perceived as enemies of the United States.

An unfortunate examples of official support for Muslim radicals whose objectives accorded with US foreign policy goals include the numerous Muslim militias that operated against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, aided by America.

More secretive support has gone to less savoury groups that opposed the US’s enemies. Considerable covert assistance to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, one of the factions in Angola’s civil war, helped make that one of the world’s longest-running and bloodiest conflicts. Alpha 66, an anti-Castro Cuban group thought responsible for several bombings and murders, operates with relative impunity in America, where it raises money and organizes violent acts abroad.

It may be that the history of the US, with its militias fighting English troops for independence, has rendered the nation’s leaders peculiarly liable to the semantic sophistry that makes one person’s terrorist another fellow’s freedom-loving hero. One need only recall the case of those anti-Communist Nicaraguan mercenaries so beloved of President Reagan.

But, even when the US’s allies have been the targets of terror, America’s response has hardly been consistent with the sort of absolute mobilization demanded by the War on Terrorism. And there may be a good reason.

When Northern Ireland erupted in sectarian violence, the US was a favoured source of unofficial popular support for those attempting to throw off British rule. Estimates vary as to the amount of money raised in the United States - mostly in the Northeast - but over the years of the ‘Troubles’ millions of US dollars supported the Irish Republican Army.

The US and other countries are rushing to put steel into existing and new laws that strictly enforce sanctions against terrorists and their fund-raising and political relations. But outlawing groups with affiliations to terrorist organizations may in fact prolong conflicts, since it is difficult to enter into peace talks unless there is someone to talk to. Why not amend the rhetoric of the War on Terrorism and just say “we want to kill or capture for trial all involved in the Sept 11 attacks?” It would be a harder sell, perhaps. But it is safer and ultimately more helpful to the US’s future than strapping on the shining armour of a Global Crusader. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Newsday.