With the passage of time, some of our fears now seem overwrought. The terrorists are not 10 feet tall. Their resources are not infinite. But the biggest reason a sunny day is beginning to feel normal again is that we have not been content to be victims.
It could so easily have been different. I would venture that if this calamity had hit America when Bill Clinton was president, there would have been lots of yellow ribbons and tearful ceremonies for the dead -- along with lots of soul searching about our role in the world and the desperation of those who live in "underdeveloped" nations. Clinton (or Gore) would have used the military against Afghanistan, but in a "surgical" way, not a clean sweep regime change. And so the problem would have been kicked down the road by a few months and nothing more.
President Bush was firm and militant in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, but this was no mere political gesture for the moment. It was his conception that we had begun a global war against terror, not a tactical response to a single attack. In the space of 22 months, the United States, together with dozens of allies, has removed the Taliban; arrested or killed 3,000 Al Qaeda operatives, including 65 percent of the top echelon; disrupted terrorist communications, financing and recruitment; beefed up border security; improved the capacity of our intelligence agencies to do their jobs; and unseated the terrorist underworld's favorite head of state, Saddam Hussein.
When we were stocking our basements with bottled water, we didn't know whether our government would diminish the threat we faced or not. There have been hiccups along the way, but overall President Bush has proved himself a great wartime leader -- even though many of his countrymen would prefer to delude themselves about the war's necessity.