Somewhere between 9/11 and now, we forgot that wars are not supposed to be generations-long struggles. They’re supposed to chart a clear-if-difficult path to a victory, measured in a safer and more just peace at a reasonable cost. Struggle — a burden actually borne by a much smaller proportion of the populace than those who find that burden cleansing to the American spirit — is not supposed to be an indication of a war’s merits. A war without end used to be the height of a country’s madness.

al-Qaeda are not ten feet tall. There is no such thing as Muslim heat vision. Those allied against the United States under al-Qaeda’s banner are conspiracy theorists whose primary means to success lies in provoking the U.S. into one counterproductive blunder after another. Why not capitalize on that? Wars don’t have to go on forever, and they don’t have to be lost.

I’ll save my pathetic what-I-did-on-9/11 story — what I did on 9/14 when I tried to get to help at Ground Zero is the better story anyway — for the tenth anniversary.