The Hundred Days

Then we brandished steel. Most Americans did not even know that our special forces could ride horseback, train a laser on a tank and see it pulverized by a bomber that might have come from Missouri. Like other things noble and serious, this military machine of precision and ferocity had lain dormant during the long slumber.

On Sept. 11, Afghanistan was still known as the graveyard of empires. (Had not Britain and Russia been run to ground by its rugged terrain and implacable defenders?) A hundred days later, Afghanistan is free and the Taliban crushed. Yes, Omar and Osama may still be on the run. Yes, the war will continue. But the power and resolve that America demonstrated in Afghanistan have already deeply impressed the world.

Impressed Yemen, for example. Yemen, fearing (or sympathizing with?) the terrorists more than the U.S., would not give us the time of day in the investigation of the Cole. Indeed, it impeded us. That was then. Last week Yemen suddenly launched attacks on its own al-Qaeda camps. Yemen joins the war on terrorism? This is new. This is news. And it comes not from love of America. It comes from deep fear and newfound respect.

What we have done in the hundred days is neither D-day nor Gettysburg. It is not the founding of the Republic nor the taming of the wilderness. But it is something, and it is worthy. This generation of Americans--post-Vietnam, post-cold war, never challenged--has had no finer hour.