Editorial: At war: Eloquence and Force.(Brief Article)(Editorial)

Those who watch the progress of war from home must be patient with tactical execution, impatient with strategic indecision.

Almost from the beginning President Bush has expressed our injuries and our goals with eloquence and force. His speech to the United Nations General Assembly was as powerful as his speech to Congress, filled with lines bound for the headlines, and the history books: (of the 9/11 murderers) "[They] killed with equal indifference and equal satisfaction"; (of the murderers' worldview) "Few countries meet their exacting standards of brutality and oppression"; (of their silent partners) "The allies of terror are equally guilty of murder and equally accountable to justice"; (of terror in general [cc. Yasser Arafat, Gerry Adams, et al.]) "No national aspiration, no remembered wrong can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent"; (of our historical moment and its responsibilities) "The time for sympathy has now passed; the time for action has now arrived."

The audience for such performances naturally wants to know who Bush's writers were; they should be proud. But the fact remains that every president, even in the age of the ghost, gives the speeches he deserves. They are written with him in mind, and he signs off on the texts. The aimless-among whom Bush, pre-9/11, was sometimes numbered- will utter bland, forgettable stuff. The inspired-Bush after 9/11-will be inspiring.

Does our strategy match our words? At moments it has looked as if we were collecting coalitions for their own sake, and dropping bombs in the Micawber-like hope that something would turn up. The events of early November in northern Afghanistan gave the lie to these reasonable worries. With support from the air and from special forces, the Northern Alliance, hitherto feeble and divided, has swept into almost every major northern town, including Kabul, the capital. The Taliban, which fled many positions without a fight, imagines that it is making a strategic retreat, and it may well counterattack. But its own commanders have begun to defect, making the universal obeisance to success. (Treachery, in this as in other tribal warrior societies, is not shameful: The warrior is the judge of his own honor, and so long as he is brave, it does not matter which side he is brave on.) The victories give the United States and its allies important bases hundreds of miles closer to the remaining fields of action, immeasurably improving our ...