Speakers at the November 30 conference also said that the development of civil society in Afghanistan would be crucial to stabilizing the country, and reversing its status as a terrorist haven. They also emphasized the need to fight organized crime and money laundering as an important part of the counter-terror strategy.

One of the featured speakers, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the war against terrorism needs moral clarity - seeing the terrorists as evil and not distinguishing between "soft," or "good" terrorists, and "bad" ones. "Nothing justifies terror - deliberate targeting of civilians for political goals. This is unmitigated evil," he said.

"The root cause of terror is the totalitarian mindset, the one that says, 'my goals are above the law. I set the law - and have the right to murder," Netanyahu stressed.

The second requirement for success in the anti-terrorism campaign is strategic clarity, Netanyahu said. He voiced full support of US President George W. Bush's and British Prime Minister Tony Blair's position that Middle Eastern regimes must face the choice: "to surrender terrorists or surrender power." The Taliban is the first such regime, others are to follow - and without delay, Netanyahu said.

Another featured speaker, Richard Perle - chairman of the US Defense Department's Defense Policy Board, and a top adviser to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - stressed that the future of American democracy is on the line. "We either going to become a police state, or take this war to police states that harbor terrorists," he said.

Perle's said Phase Two of the anti-terrorism campaign should target Iraq because of Saddam Hussein's attempts to acquire weapons of mass destruction and his proven commitment to use them against civilians.

Speaking earlier, at a November 14 dinner sponsored by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Perle argued that Saddam could be toppled. "Saddam is despised in his own country, as anyone who rules the way he has would be. He is hated in the north by the Kurds, in the south by the Shi'ia, in the west even by many Sunnis - and organizing a resistance to Saddam would not be difficult," he said.

The US government, Perle added, should "start the planning now for the removal of Saddam Hussein, work with the opposition now, so we won't be in the situation we were in when we went into Afghanistan where we had no one on the ground, because we could put Iraqi opposition on the ground tomorrow in Iraq."

European speakers at the November 30 conference were reluctant to endorse an expansion of the war against terrorism. Sophia Clement of the French Ministry of Defense and Constanze Stelzenmueller, a foreign policy and security editor of the Hamburg-based Die Zeit disagreed with Perle's view of the war goals. "We have serious severe reservations about military actions against other countries," Clement said. She stressed that immediate actions should not undermine the long-term political goals. The Europeans emphasized that "the sustainable coalition is necessary to proceed with the war."

Clement expressed dissatisfaction with the United States' go-it-alone tendency in the conduct of military operations, citing the US military's refusal to integrate more European troops in the military operations. "For deep and long-term involvement on the ground, we need a stable coalition."

Stelzenmueller complained about the high costs of German involvement in the Balkans, where the Federal Republic has deployed 7,000 troops and is spending over DM 170 million a year. "We would like to know what is the size and the length of reconstruction effort in the Middle East, if the US were to take military actions there," she said.

Europeans and Americans also disagreed over the policy towards Iran. Americans and Israelis at the conference welcomed demonstrations and popular protests in Iran, and warned against rapprochement with the Khatami administration, which has ties to the Hizballah (Army of God) terrorist movement based in Lebanon. "Iranian people want democracy, and voted for Khatami only because he is the least of all evils. If secular candidates ran in truly democratic elections, they are likely to win," Perle said.

Netanyahu denounced British Foreign Minister Jack Straw's recent overtures to Iran. However, the Europeans in attendance called for treating Iran as a "normal country" and keeping it on board the anti-terrorist coalition, despite its support of Hizballah and other terrorist groups. The conference demonstrated the differences in approach to the war on two sides of the Atlantic - differences that also exist among various departments of the US federal government.

The conference was organized by New Atlantic Initiative of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. Other key participants included: Iain Duncan Smith, the British opposition leader; Effi Eitam (Fein), Brigadier General (Reserve), Israel Defense Forces; Onur Oymen, Turkish Ambassador to NATO; Jane Harman, U.S. House of Representatives (D-Calif.); and Fred Thompson, U.S. Senate (R-Tenn.).

Editor's Note: Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.