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So the United States, and indeed the world, is an audience at a great match of terrorism versus civilization. Our collective heads sway back and forth, now convinced that relative quiet is proof of our wisdom, now dejected that suicide bombs prove we were naïve, if not worse, in taking out Saddam. And we haven't even come to the summer's political conventions, the elections in Afghanistan, the Olympics, and our own November voting.
Without historical perspective, thousands of pundits and politicians maneuver every 24-hours to "prove" that their shifting and contradictory positions, like millions of the American people's own rising and falling spirits, are in fact really consistent and principled. But mostly they are all just confused about Iraq and not sure whether we are emerging from a few skirmishes with a few weeks left to the armistice or firing away on Guadalcanal with three more years of mayhem to go.
So, we put up with the hype and distortions that will climax in November when each dead American is seen as the equivalent of an entire division, each insurrectionist explosion will be proof of a new Lebanon, and each errant American bomb a final confirmation of another Dresden. We know it; the terrorists count on it; and, yes, the media will deliver it.
Brace yourself: In the next three months we are all in for the ride of our lives.
Victor Davis Hanson, an NRO contributor, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of The Soul of Battle and Carnage and Culture, among other books. His website is www.victorhanson.com.
