To be sure, the war on terrorism hasn't gone exactly as planned — or, to be more accurate, exactly as we might have hoped in our most optimistic imaginings. Still, it's remarkable that here we are, just six weeks since the terrorist attacks, and already words such as "quagmire" and "incompetence" are being heard.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing that President Bush and his team shouldn't be questioned, and questioned hard. And no, I'm not particularly inspired by everything our government has done and said since September 11.

I worry that bombing the wasteland of Afghanistan is no way to flush Osama bin Laden out of his cave — and that our actions may amount to a recruiting campaign for a new generation of terrorists. Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson (among others) has been less than confidence-building in his handling of the anthrax scare. And I certainly want to smack parasitic bottom-feeders such as House majority leader Dick Armey and House majority whip Tom DeLay for exploiting the crisis by ramming through an odious package of tax breaks for corporations and the rich.

But, really, when you hear folks compare the situation in Afghanistan to the Vietnam era, you have to wonder whether the news cycle has accelerated to the point where analysis has become meaningless, or worse. We've entered into what's probably going to be a 10-year war, and we're going to go through long stretches where we make no progress at all, or even move backwards. The current strategy may need to be retooled, but I assume — I hope — that Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, et al. are constantly evaluating and reassessing. As for the anthrax missteps, well, who would know how to respond to such a horrifyingly new unknown?

The historian David Kennedy (no relation) wrote a useful piece in the New York Times on Sunday, reminding us that, in the weeks after Pearl Harbor, the mood of many Americans was "baffled, frightened and grim." Like the Germans and the Japanese, bin Laden's terrorists have the advantage of having struck first. For all our technological superiority, it's going to take a while for us to catch up.

The ruins of the World Trade Center are still smoking. Did anyone really expect this to be over by now? We demand instant gratification. This time, though, we're not going to get it.

Issue Date: October 29, 2001