Year three.(AT WAR)(Iraq War)

THE American-led invasion of Afghanistan was so quick and crushing--scarcely had R. W. Apple written the word "quagmire" than the Taliban fell--that many supporters of the Iraq War expected a similar sweep. American and British troops rolled up the Tigris-Euphrates valley to Baghdad in three weeks, but the hunt for Saddam and his sons, and the struggle against Baathist and al-Qaeda terrorists (as well as, at times, freelance Sunni and Shiite extremists), has prolonged the war to three years. More than 2,300 Americans have paid the highest price.

Three years is an eternity in our ADD era, and long by the standards of American wars. Appomattox came four years after Ft. Sumter, Tokyo Bay three years and nine months after Pearl Harbor. But many wars, including the Cold War, have taken decades. At the beginning of the Iraq War, NR recalled Trotsky, who observed that a man wishing an easy life picked the wrong century to be born in. This is not an argument for blank checks or fighting without metrics, merely a call for realism, and patience.

If we had not invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam in 2003, what would the world look like? He would have slipped out of the regime of sanctions--the status quo simply could not be maintained--and gone full speed ahead with WMD. As his science adviser told the Iraqi Survey Group, "Saddam's primary concern was retaining a cadre of skilled scientists to facilitate reconstitution of WMD programs after sanctions were lifted." If he could slip germs to terrorists, we would have a gaudier 9/11.

What would be the consequences of the quick and chastened pullout that Democrats, and some self-chastened conservatives, want now? Donald ...