Mark Danner in the New York Times Magazine:
Today marks four years of war. Four years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. troops ruled unchallenged in Japan and Germany. During those 48 months, Americans created an unmatched machine of war and decisively defeated two great enemies.
How are we to judge the global war on terror four years on? In this war, the president had warned, “Americans should not expect one battle but a lengthy campaign.” We could expect no “surrender ceremony on a deck of a battleship,” and indeed, apart from the president’s abortive attempt on the U.S.S. Lincoln to declare victory in Iraq, there has been none. Failing such rituals of capitulation, by what “metric” – as the generals say – can we measure the progress of the global war on terror?
More here.