The war against Iraq would be a proper war fought from strength—fought in the American tradition of rushing to make good lack of preparations and coping by reliance on organizational skills, military training, technological capacity, and patriotic determination. In Iraq the American security establishment almost from the moment of the cease-fire discovered that normality meant unconventional tasking. The American public, like the Pentagon, preferred to watch the spectaculars rather than participate, preferred to think about biological warfare or terrorist nuclear devices as scenarios for films. The Pentagon's desire to avoid the unconventional is simply most American reinforced by the nature of any professional military establishment. The Pentagon, the military, is the most American of all institutions, is open to the new and the ambitious, incorporates the nation's ideals, response to challenge and crisis as do the people at large.