I'll admit that I was a bit worried when I considered Dubya as Commander in Chief of the War on Terror. I voted for him based on economic policies rather than social or international matters, but I knew that he'd have elder statesmen such as Dick Cheney and Colin Powell along to give sage advice and pointers. But when 911 happened, I wondered if what they had to say would mean much at all, especially given Dubya's nature to lead quietly but talk loudly and, on occasion, rashly.

By and large, I've had most of my fears allayed. Despite a few cases of rash talk and cultural oopsies - such as the "crusade" comment - Bush hasn't been doing too badly in Afghanistan. The Taliban are out of power, Al-Queda's on the run and the coalition forces are working with the new Afghani government to prosecute the war's end. It hasn't been an ideal situation, of course, but compared to the fiasco it could have been - and some nay-sayers thought it would be - things have actually been, dare I say it, alright.

Of course, that's just the right time to start screwing up.

Thus far, since things have quieted down a little, Bush and his talking heads have made three very telling blunders. While they're not irrevocable or fatal, they have thrown some doubt on the future of the War on Terror. If we're to succeed, we need to learn from them post-haste, and start playing the game a little smarter than we have, lately.

The first blunder seemed like a good-natured gesture. Bush said that any nation who was fighting terrorism just needed to ask, and we'd send some American troops along to help them with the struggle.

While this sounds like it's in keeping with the War on Terror, and a right neighborly thing to do, it's just asking for trouble. If we get taken up on this offer, we might be sending our troops into several convoluted hot zones to try and quell violence that's been untold ages in the making. Some of those terrorists might have links to Al-Queda, but there's lots more who have nothing to do with them, and are just fighting their own fight that really has nothing to do with American security or interests.

Lesson One: Bottom line, we need to define the War on Terror, here. Are we going to fight terrorism whenever it pops up, no matter how local in scope, or are we going to focus on international groups like Al-Queda who are directly attacking our interests - or us? If it's the former, we're going to be farming out our soldiers to country after country until the cows come home, spreading our ranks dangerously thin. I think our men and women in uniform have much better things to be doing than solving other people's problems for them.

The second blunder was in dealing with the newly-created Afghani government. The plea was made by certain members of that government for us to please stop our bombing. Now that there's a legitimate government in place, that seems like a reasonable request for them to make, and for us to abide by. After all, it is now their country.

But no. We refused. We said we'd just keep it up, thank you very much - oh, and don't forget to duck ...

That seems the height of arrogance to me. When Afghanistan was held by a hostile power, we claimed the right to go in there and do as we pleased. But now that there's folks in there who are in control of the situation that are not hostile towards us - people who we're allied with on the ground, no less. How can we just dismiss their requests?

Of course, since then Afghanistan's Foreign Minister's said we can continue bombing with no worries. I wonder how much of that was a case of their new leader taking the dissenters under his arm and urging them to silence, and how much of that was the sudden realization of who's ordering whom. Either way, it does not look very good at all.

Lesson Two: In the future, we might be conducting operations on soil that is not held by hostile powers, but by allies, or at least people who've requested our aid (see Lesson One). If we pay their governments no heed, and just do what we want, when we want, we run the risk of reinforcing the stereotype the world has of us: brash, uncaring imperialists who trod the locals underfoot. This is not a good image to have - look what it did for Britain.

And, lastly, speaking of arrogance - or at least a bad case of shortsightedness - we have our current take on India and Pakistan.

India's Parliament was the victim of a terror attack not too long ago, and India claims to have traced the perpetrators to Pakistani terror groups. At that point, India started rattling sabers at Pakistan, who started rattling sabers back. For a few very worrisome days, it looked like the two rival nations might be going to war with one another again. Even now, with some of the holiday spirit rubbing off on both sides, and some renewed attempts at diplomacy occurring, they remain on high alert: one nasty incursion in Kashmir from either one could set it all off.

Of course, our reaction is to call up both leaders and try to get them to cool things off. That's just the sensible thing to do. But then some plug-in voicebox at a high level has to say that our real concern is that, if Pakistan moves its forces from the Afghan border to the Indian one, Bin Laden might sneak on through.

That is a real concern, of course, but, given the current situation, that's an ice cube to a hailstorm. India and Pakistan do not like one another. They have been at war with one another three times, twice over border disputes in Kashmir. And - in case you didn't know - both nations have nuclear weapons aimed at one another.

Needless to say, the world would be very ill-served by seeing Islamabad and/or New Delhi disappear. The fallout patterns would be devastating. The human misery would be unmeasurable. Some people in the media have been advocating - or merely salivating over - the nuclear obliteration of large swaths of "questionable" territory as a just response to 911. These people are idiots.

So how idiotic, then, is it to just blithely pooh-pooh the spectre of nuclear war in Asia because Bin Laden might get into Pakistan? I have the feeling that if he showed his face in public there, he'd be grabbed by some dirt-poor Pakistani patriot in need of huge wads of American cash, anyway. Now, maybe we might THINK "hmmm, what if Bin Laden slips through," but we really should keep that thought to ourselves and say something a little more intelligent.

Lesson Three: In our desire to rid the world of terror, and those who promote it, let's not lose sight of the fact that there are other, perhaps more pressing concerns we should be looking at. If we want to ride over the hills as some sort of global police force, we need to recognize that those hills have history: we ignore it at our own peril.

Hopefully, certain well-spoken individuals who understand history, tactics and strategy have told Dubya of the need to learn these three lessons. Hopefully he's taken them to heart, too. But we have a bad habit of ignoring crucial lessons until we've been badly burned, and this is one fire we can't afford to stumble into.

Stay tuned

Accusations flying, colliding cheek to cheek - Button up your lip and think before you speak.

Silly Thing - Siouxsie and the Banshees