For a new kind of war, it had an old sort of start. In the places where soldiers and sailors live--in Norfolk, Va.; Fort Bragg, N.C.; in a hundred other towns of the Republic and far beyond its shores--the rhetoric of impending battle was rendered into the humdrum details of military life. Bills were paid; kit bags packed; wives, husbands and children hugged. Patriotism hung in the air, as palpable as the first chills of fall; flags sprouted on a million lapels and fluttered from a thousand taxicabs in a wounded but defiant New York. On television, the reports came from Islamabad, not as they had a decade ago from Riyadh or Baghdad or Amman. And as predecessors in his high office--including his father--had done before, George W. Bush drove from the White House to the Capitol, and in an address to Congress and the watching world, discharged the weightiest responsibility that any President can ever be asked to shoulder. Americans, Bush said, had to prepare for a "lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen." That this will be a real war was made explicit. "I've called the armed forces to alert," said Bush, "and there is a reason. The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud."

Other Presidents have issued a call to arms. But few have cast their challenge in terms as wide as Bush's. The war to find, stop and defeat "every terrorist group of global reach," he said, was "civilization's fight." That fight, indeed, has already started, as law enforcement officials attempt to discover who was behind the atrocities and how they might be brought to justice. And it is a fight in which the forensic processes of the criminal-justice system promise to be augmented by the thud and thump of military action.

In his speech, Bush spoke directly to the Taliban, the radical Islamic regime that rules Afghanistan and harbors Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda network, which is the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 atrocities. Bush demanded that the Taliban hand over all terrorist leaders to U.S. authorities. The Taliban has not done so, demanding, in turn, proof that bin Laden is guilty. If the Taliban does not shift from that position, a shooting war seems inevitable. Sources tell TIME that the first, secret deployment orders issued to the Air Force and Navy set a goal of having warplanes ready for action by Sept. 24. For most of last week, Pentagon officials worked to polish a war plan that is likely to supplement the bombing with missions by special-forces units against terrorist training camps in Afghanistan; the plan also contemplates the introduction of ground forces, if needed, which could tilt the balance of power in the country to the elements that oppose the Taliban--although finding a stable government for Kabul would be difficult.

This war will not be for the fainthearted. Sources tell TIME that the Administration is considering altering the ban on assassinating enemies of the U.S., adopted 25 years ago. Bin Laden, the Administration believes, is not covered by the ban; as one who has waged an act of war against the U.S., he is considered fair game in any military operation. But a change in policy might help the fight against other leaders of international terrorism. Guns and bombs, however, are not the whole story. "We should not overemphasize the military part of this," says a senior White House adviser. Bush's war is one that will be fought sometimes on fronts where there are no foxholes, without the benefit of night-vision goggles and precision-guided missiles. It will involve actions that are economic, financial, political and even religious. Nor will the war be fought only in the folds of Afghanistan's rugged corrugations. The kind of group responsible for the attacks, as a former U.S. diplomat says, cannot simply be "a guy talking on a cell phone in a cave." It surely includes members of a "network that is deep within the society of the United States, Germany and other countries." The battlefields of the new war, it follows, will include the countinghouses of Swiss banks, the teeming cities of North Africa and the Middle East--and the suburbs of New Jersey, Michigan, Paris and Hamburg. "This is as complete a war effort as mankind has ever seen," says Senator Chuck Hagel, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

That said, historians, as they must, will peer into their occluded mirrors to find the closest parallel to such a challenge. Is it the Monroe Doctrine, which warned the nations of the Old World to keep their snouts away from the feeding troughs of the New? Or--less happily--is the analogy to Woodrow Wilson's determination to make the world safe for democracy, a crusade disavowed at home and mocked abroad and whose ending was the greatest charnel house the world has ever known? History tells us this at least: when nations take upon themselves a global responsibility to rid the world of a shameful practice, they had better prepare for the long haul. In the early 19th century, it took the British navy the better part of 50 years to close down the Atlantic slave trade. If Bush is serious, he has laid upon his successors a task hardly less demanding than the one he has adopted for himself. In just such fashion did Harry Truman in 1947 commit his nation to a 40-year-long cold war against totalitarian communism.

It takes nothing away from Bush, and the clenched-jaw poise with which he delivered his speech to Congress, to say that but two weeks ago, few would have thought him adequate to the task he now faces. At first blush, there is little in the President's background that equips him for his new mission. He is not a young man--10 years older than John F. Kennedy was at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, only four years younger than Franklin D. Roosevelt, on the original day of infamy. But for someone age 55, he has often seemed to have absorbed few of the annealing lessons of maturity.

Yet Bush's plainspoken style may be well suited to a time of fear, grief and a primal rage for revenge. Those close to him recognize the costs associated with such an attribute. It was a mistake, at a time when the U.S. needs to be sensitive to its Muslim citizens and friends in Islamic countries, to cast the nation's task as a "crusade"; it was crass for Bush to adopt the attitude of a frontier sheriff and say he wanted bin Laden captured "dead or alive." "Sometimes he can be too plainspoken," says an adviser. "But when you net it all out, people like someone when he tells it like it is."

That's why the President's inner circle was not overly worried about the speech to Congress. Even some of his advisers concede that his performance on Sept. 11 left something to be desired. But his aides say Bush turned a corner on the Friday after the attacks, with a speech at the Washington National Cathedral, an impromptu rallying cry amid the rubble at Ground Zero and--in private--two hours comforting, and weeping with, the families of those who have lost loved ones. Andrew Card, his chief of staff, says the President has "made sure that there is a balance to his effort--and that includes taking care of his mind and body and spirit." Bush is sticking to his exercise regimen, watching his diet and making sure that he gets a decent night's sleep, though now he typically gets to the office just before 7 a.m. rather than just after it.

The President's team knows that he delivers a speech better to a live audience than to a TelePrompTer as he sits at a desk; that is why the White House suggested that his call to the nation should be given to the entire Congress, packed into the chamber of the House of Representatives. Bush knew it would--must--be the most important address he had ever given. When the speech was suggested on Monday morning, he turned to Karen Hughes, his Counsellor, and said, "I want a copy tonight." Hughes protested; that was impossible. "By 7," he added. Bush, says a senior aide, "wanted it early because he wanted to see if this was something he wanted to do in the first place."