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The big question is how we fight this war to deliver to Americans what they
want -- which is not revenge, but justice and security. It requires a new
attitude toward the battle and new strategy on the battlefield.

What attitude? We need to be really focused, really serious, and just a
little bit crazy. I don't mean we should indiscriminately kill people,
especially innocent Afghans. I mean that the terrorists and their
supporters need to know that from here forward we will do whatever it takes
to defend our way of life -- and then some. From here forward, it's the bad
guys who need to be afraid every waking moment. The more frightened our
enemies are today, the fewer we will have to fight tomorrow.

As for the new strategy, if our first priority is to destroy the Osama bin
Laden network in Afghanistan, then we need to understand that it takes a
home-grown network to destroy a home-grown network. Let me put it another
way: If Osama bin Laden were hiding in the jungles of Colombia instead of
Afghanistan, whose help would we enlist to find him? U.S. Army Special
Forces? The Colombian Army? I don't think so.

Actually, we would enlist the drug cartels. They have the three attributes
we need: They know how to operate as a covert network and how to root out a
competing network, such as bin Laden's. They can be bought and know how to
buy others. And they understand that when we say we want someone "dead or
alive" we mean "dead or dead."

The Cali cartel doesn't operate in Afghanistan. But the Russian mafia sure
does, as do various Afghan factions, drug rings and Pakistani secret
agents. They all have their local, home-grown networks, and it is through
such networks that the Afghan part of this war on terrorism will be fought.
"The best news I've heard in a week was that Vladimir Putin is serious
about joining the coalition," said Moises Naim, editor of the journal
Foreign Policy. "This sort of character can really help now."

Moises is right. Something tells me Putin, the Russian president and former
KGB spymaster, has the phone number of the guy in the Russian mafia who
knows the guy in the Afghan cartels who knows the guy who knows the guy who
knows where bin Laden is hiding. It is going to be that kind of war.