And now the Philippines.

Byline: The Register-Guard

With little fanfare and no public discussion, the Bush administration has begun the first expansion outside Afghanistan of the war on global terrorism.

The newest U.S. target is the Abu Sayyaf organization in the southern Philippines, a barbarous group given to kidnappings, beheadings and a grisly assortment of other atrocities. Abu Sayyaf guerrillas have been playing a maddening and deadly hide-and-seek game with government troops for the past year, moving from camp to camp through the jungles of Basilan Island, dragging with them a collection of kidnap victims that includes two American missionaries.

More than 600 U.S. troops, a third of them special forces, are to take part. An agreement with the Filipino government will allow them to work with government troops and to defend themselves. They will not be allowed to directly engage the guerrillas.

At first glance, the Philippines beachhead seems to be a good idea. Abu Sayyaf has had ties to the al-Qaeda network, and it makes sense to destroy a potential sanctuary for terrorists, especially those fleeing from Afghanistan. As U.S. forces clean up pockets of resistance in Afghanistan, it cannot neglect the need to conduct a broader hunt for Afghan fugitives and terrorist cells.

But the Philippines mission is not without risk. It's possible that U.S. soldiers will die in the tropical bush alongside Asian allies. It's also possible that the conflict could spread to involve the much larger rebel force on nearby Mindanao, the Moro National Liberation Front.

There are risks for the Filipino government as well. The U.S. intervention, requested by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, comes perilously close to violating the Philippines Constitution, which bars foreign soldiers from fighting on sovereign soil. The prospect of a post-Afghanistan phase of the U.S. war on terrorism being waged in the Philippines has deeply offended many Filipinos, who rejoiced at the closure of the last U.S. military base in 1991.

In Manila, 500 miles to the north of Basilan, critics have attacked Arroyo for inviting U.S. troops, and there are calls for her impeachment. On Basilan, the poor, predominately Muslim population is supportive of Abu Sayyaf, which has shrewdly shared its ransom proceeds with locals. One reason that guerrillas have been able to evade army patrols has been advance warnings from locals, as well as from Muslim soldiers.

Given the potential for a difficult political and military mission, the Bush administration owes Congress and the American public an open, candid discussion of its plans, as well as any future expansions of the war on terrorism that could engage U.S. forces in combat.

There's also the risk of American overconfidence. Afghanistan has given the Bush administration a heady belief that U.S. technology and firepower will prevail against any enemy. Even a cursory study of history shows that's not the case.

White House officials would do well to read about the last time the United States set out to crush Muslim separatists in the southern Philippines. When President Theodore Roosevelt's sent U.S. troops to pacify what was then United States' new Pacific colony, the result was an ugly, prolonged guerrilla campaign that lasted years and cost the lives of thousands of Muslims and Americans.

The United States got much more than it was asking for in 1903. U.S. officials should make certain that won't be the case a century later.