Consider the diplomatic dilemmas our president confronts. Does he, like his father in Desert Storm, enlist Syria in the war coalition, or are the Syrians enemies? Does he reach out to President Mohammad Khatami, the elected leader of an Iran that is deeply hostile to the Taliban, or are they too on the enemies list? Does Bush seek Vladimir V. Putin's help, or does Russia's war against the Chechens, who have committed acts of terror, disqualify them as allies? Do we press for peace between Yasser Arafat and the Israelis, or is that rewarding terror? What took place last Tuesday was an atrocity. What is coming may qualify as tragedy. For the mass murder of our citizens has filled this country with a terrible resolve that could lead it to plunge headlong into an all-out war against despised Arab and Islamic regimes that turns into a war of civilizations, with the United States almost alone. In the presidential campaign of 2000, we failed to make foreign policy the issue. But what I said then retains relevance: "How can all our meddling not fail to spark some horrible retribution .... Have we not suffered enough--from Pan Am 103, to the World Trade Center, to the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam - not to know that interventionism is the incubator of terrorism. Or will it take some cataclysmic atrocity on U.S. soil to awaken our global gamesmen to the going price of empire? "America today faces a choice of destinies. We can choose to be a peacemaker of the world, or its policeman who goes about night-sticking troublemakers until we, too, find ourselves in some bloody brawl we cannot handle." In his intervention in Lebanon's civil war, President Reagan made a rare blunder. But when our Marines were massacred, he did not send a mighty army to avenge them. He used U.S. power to exact a price, then extricated us from that war. There is no vital American interest at risk in all these religious, territorial and tribal wars from Algeria to Afghanistan. Let us pay back those who did this, then let us extricate ourselves. Either America finds an exit strategy from empire, or we lose our republic.