Richard Reeves:

Yahoo! News - THE NEW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS As for "outcome," the military outcome of this war has never been in doubt -- and, hopefully, the worst of it is over. We are going to win the fight for territory and postwar control, at least in the beginning. Whatever mistakes were made in Washington and in the field -- particularly the White House's dismissive denials that wars against evil might involve any sacrifice of lives or money -- will soon be forgotten by the masses watching victory parades. The longer-term political outcome could be disastrous for us, but by then we will be on to other things. That is the way politics has worked for at least the five centuries from Machiavelli to Madonna.

The trick now for the figure at the center of all this, the bold President Bush, is to focus attention on the military outcome and then to hold off the political accounting until after his re-election in 17 months. That will not be as easy as persuading Americans that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was the bad guy behind the killings of Sept. 11, 2001. With the probability that the U.S. economy may not be in the best of shape during 2004, the president may have to try to keep war fever up and political opposition down for the next year and a half. The voices of the few will have to be stifled by the crowd -- and that may mean more war.