President Bush and Prime Minister Blair will have plenty to talk about when they sit down together at Hillsborough Castle. Our hope is that they’ll reflect on the price of ending the war on terror too soon. When America won the Cold War and then the first Gulf War, we heaved a collective sigh of relief, declared a “peace dividend,” and proceeded to ignore the gathering threats in the world. The attack of September 11, 2001, however, showed that there is a price to declaring victory prematurely.

America responded to the September 11 attack by ousting Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime from Afghanistan. A lot of people wanted to stop there, but Messrs. Bush and Blair insisted on taking action against a similar and related threat in Iraq. Now there’s already lobbying and speculation underway about what will be the next target.

Whatever is suggested, there will no doubt be opposition from the same quarters that opposed the move against the Taliban and that also opposed the move against Saddam. This is natural and even healthy, as it is an indication that Americans are a peace-loving people with no imperial ambitions. But the events of the past week are starting to make people think that there is a logic to a wider war.

This started with the warnings from Secretary Rumsfeld with respect to Syria, which has been, he charged, supplying the Iraqis with military equipment. This talk has gotten loud enough that Prime Minister Blair last week told the BBC’s Arabic service that the United States had no plans to attack other countries in the region. “There is no question of ‘who next?'” he added. “We’re in Iraq for a particular reason and this is not a war against Iraq, this is a war against Saddam.”

On Friday, however, the Iraqi National Congress, a group of opponents to Saddam Hussein, issued a press release disclosing that on March 29 a group of 21 suicide bombers loyal to Saddam arrived in Damascus. “Their mission is to attack US and British interests worldwide, such as embassies and major corporations,” the INC reported from Northern Iraq. Eleven of the suicide bombers are Iraqis, it says, and ten are Egyptians. It wouldn’t be the first time Egypt has spawned terrorist kingpins; Mohammed Atta, one of the leaders of the September 11 attacks, was from Egypt. Nor would it be the first time Syria sheltered anti-American terrorists; Hezbollah, one of the deadliest anti-American terrorist groups, now makes its base in Syrian-occupied Lebanon.

These columns have been with those who reckon there are plenty of candidates in the Middle East for follow-on covert or military action by America. In Iran, as Michael Ledeen has been reporting for years, there is simmering beneath the anti-American Islamist dictatorship a revolution just ripe for American assistance. In the oil rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, as Max Singer reported nearly a year ago in The New York Sun, an indigenous population, oppressed by the minority Wahabi faction backed by the Saudi royals, is growing restive to have a democratic state of its own. It could be a way to sever the Saudi kingdom from its oil wealth.

One could also talk about Lebanon, which is currently occupied by Syria and tyrannized by Hezbollah. And for that matter, Egypt, which has been playing one of the least responsible roles by any important country on the Middle East scene. For our part, we’re not particularly exercised over where one starts so much as we are concerned for the principle that no one who sides against America in the war on terror be declared off limits from the kind of action that is now being prosecuted in Iraq.

No doubt Mr. Blair is going to try to cajole Mr. Bush into putting Israel into this mix. But whatever “roadmap” is advanced for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs will delineate an ambush alley until the terror masters are defeated. It would be folly to believe they are all holed up in Iraq.