False Spring.(war on terrorism far from over)(Brief Article)

Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.

In Washington, March is sometimes the cruelest month. The air softens, the low sky opens up and spreads a bit, and the cherry blossoms begin to burgeon along the avenues and riverbanks. The trees were originally a present from the Japanese city of Nagasaki, and the most celebrated of their effusions burst forth around the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial, creating an almost snow-covered effect that has long magnetized tourists from far away. Lawyers and lobbyists loosen their ties, the young women of the city venture forth in lighter garments, children flood the parks and then--suddenly-- a harsh snap of frigid weather nips the buds.

This spring has echoed and mirrored this bittersweetness. Only weeks ago, it seems, the president gave an upbeat and almost celebratory account of the union's recovery from the dastardly assault of last September. Afghanistan had been liberated, and the dapper Mr. Karzai was there in person to testify to the fact. Wherever Osama bin Laden was, he could not have been thinking that things were going according to a divine plan. In the galleries stood the envoys of many nations, as the saying goes, shoulder to shoulder with the United States. Not an inch of difference divided the two major parties. Ahead lay the task of disciplining those rogue states which, through the "evil" of their governments, had deprived their peoples of a share in the world's growing bounty and lawfulness.

The season turns, and turns again, and the cold has bitten. The flag has shrouded coffins at Ramstein air base. The president has shed public tears in Florida. The European allies and the friendlier Arab regimes have shied and balked at the prospect of a confrontation with Iraq: a confrontation that now cannot be avoided without a complete and unthinkable climb-down on the part of the United States. A sort of background noise--an especially horrible and discordant one--is the daily carnage in Israel and Palestine: a Hobbesian rebuke to the very idea of law or justice or even diplomacy, and a grotesque reminder of the limits to the Pax Americana. Meanwhile, from Georgia in the Caucasus to the southern Philippines in the Pacific, Washington is pledging aid of all kinds to a lengthening list of struggles against the protean Islamic specter. The road ahead begins to look thorny, rather than lined with blossoms, let alone laurels.

This unease has its domestic counterpart. Between increasingly clenched teeth, the ...