BY WHOM?
"War Looks Longer than Expected" reads the headline on this LAT piece by Doyle McManus. The nut graf ("thesis paragraph" to non-journalists):
But now—after Iraqi forces have mounted stiff resistance in several cities, killing at least six Americans and taking at least five U.S. soldiers prisoner—the war is beginning to look longer and more costly than some Americans expected.
Who are these "some Americans" who expected a war shorter, and with fewer casualties, than the L.A. riots? Here's the story's answer:
A Gallup Poll of Americans produced for CNN and USA Today found that two-thirds of respondents said they expected the war to last less than three months; one-third said they expected it to be over within a month; and most thought that fewer than 100 Americans would be killed or injured. Those were significantly higher levels of optimism than the same pollsters found before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Yes, we're all more optimistic than we were before the Persian Gulf War, which began with post-Vietnam fears of tens of thousands of Americans dead and years of brutal fighting. But optimism is merely relative. And "less than three months" is not "less than three days."
What we saw today was that this is a real war. Nasty, brutal, and we can only hope, short. All we've been promised is victory—and that's a promise, among other things, to persist when things get tough. [Posted 3/23.]