<p>THE FOCUS for the past six months on obtaining United Nations approval for the invasion of Iraq has obscured a simple, logical American strategy based on a clear premise. The premise is that the mass civilian killings of 9/11 triggered a world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism, sometimes called Islamism.

<p>This world war would not be happening on the scale it is were it not the case that the rise of Islamism is part and parcel of a convulsive upheaval destabilizing the billion-member world of Islam as well as neighboring countries and--at least potentially--countries with Islamic minorities. In a war of such reach and magnitude, the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future.

<p>If this premise is true, then just about everything the Bush administration is doing makes sense. So do the actions and announcements of our various adversaries and non-well-wishers in this far-flung war.

<p>The most shocking thing about 9/11 was the willingness of Islamists to carry out indiscriminate mass killing of noncombatant Americans. The attacks that day laid bare the desire of our enemies to obtain weapons of mass destruction to inflict vastly greater destruction on our country and people.

<p>The day after 9/11, there existed four deeply anti-American rogue states, clearly open to helping Islamists achieve the mass murder of Americans. They were Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. The invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 removed one of these four regimes. The coming invasion of Iraq will remove a second.

<p>Is it any wonder that the two remaining anti-American rogue states are doing everything in their power to race toward clear-cut possession of nuclear weapons? Possession of nuclear weapons by these rogue states can serve two purposes. It can deter the United States from doing to them what we have done to the Taliban and are about to do to the Baath. And, if President Bush is as determined and implacable as they fear he is, it can keep the Islamist cause alive (Iran) and allow revenge (Iran and North Korea) in the face of the impending overthrow of their governments by military or other means. The vengeance they have in mind could be prospective and openly state-sponsored, or carried out later by Islamist terror networks in possession of weapons of mass murder as a last will and testament of the North Korean and/or Iranian regimes.

<p>Not every U.S. adversary, not even every rogue state, is as clearly anti-American as Iran and North Korea. Libya and Syria, for example, have been repeatedly classified by the U.S. government as rogue states (or, in the term substituted by the Clinton administration, "states of concern"). Yet at least so far, it is unclear that they are inclined to collaborate with Islamists in the mass murder of Americans. As long as this continues to be the case, Syria, Libya, and other states so situated are unlikely to become U.S. targets in the world war.
Val:Y