An American Lion

It would be a good idea to limit surprises when you go overseas:

No one in the entourage of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was calling the trip a metaphor for the mire ahead in Afghanistan, but no one was calling it a previctory lap either. As Mr. Gates told troops in Iraq, previewing the infusion of 30,000 new American troops to Afghanistan: “I think it will look a lot like the surge here in the first six or eight months of 2007. The first six to eight months were pretty tough here.”

The trip’s snags played out through the week and across both theaters of war. Mr. Gates found himself grounded by weather in Kabul, stood up by the prime minister in Baghdad and startled by President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who blurted out at a palace news conference that the Afghans would not be able to pay for their own security forces until 2024.

The timing of Mr. Karzai’s pronouncement was not ideal: this coming week Mr. Gates has been summoned to explain to Congress the expected $30 billion a year it will cost for the escalation of the Afghan war.

Mr. Gates, who maintained his usual laconic reserve as the disarray unfolded, was by Friday more openly reflective when he acknowledged to American troops in Kirkuk, the oil-rich region north of Baghdad, how hard a sell the wars were at home. “One of the myths in the international community is that the United States likes war,” he said. “And the reality is, other than the first two or three years of World War II, there has never been a popular war in America.”

Americans love the process of getting into a war; they hate it when the war is mismanaged and drags on longer than expected. The first Gulf War was the greatest war in American history. It was over in 100 hours, everyone got to watch it on television, and the troops were home in time for springtime parades.