Acknowledging Bush's Big Win In Afghanistan.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(ON THE RIGHT)

Byline: CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

In the 1990s, Afghanistan was allowed to fall to the Taliban and become the global center for the training, indoctrination and seeding of jihadists around the world -- including the mass murderers of 9-11.

Last week, just three years after a two-month war that destroyed the Taliban, Afghanistan completed its first free election, choosing as president a pro-American democrat enjoying legitimacy and wide popular support.

This represents the single most astonishing geopolitical transformation of the last four years. (Deposing Saddam Hussein ranks second. The global jihad against America was no transformation at all: It existed long before the Bush administration. We'd simply ignored al-Qaida's declaration of war.)

Perhaps even more astonishing is how this singular American victory has disappeared from public consciousness.

Americans have a deserved reputation for historical amnesia. Three years -- an eon -- have made us imagine that the Afghan War was easy and foreordained.

Easy? In 2001, we had nothing there. What had the Clinton administration left in place? No plausible military plan. Virtually no intelligence. No local infrastructure. No neighboring bases. The Afghan Northern Alliance was fractured and weak. And Pakistan was actively supporting the bad guys.