Instant-Coffee Warriors

Instant-Coffee Warriors
You can't expect a stirring victory in a few weeks.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Thursday, November 1, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST

"U.N. Chief Wants Early End to War"
-- Associated Press headline, Oct. 30

"Survey Shows Doubts Stirring on Terror War"
-- New York Times headline, Oct. 30

We've all been reading this sort of stuff lately, as the shock and resolve of September start to blur. The strange message now winding through the headlines is that the measure of America's success is whether we can win a war in less time than it takes to get the fall fashions off the racks.

I guess we all wish that were possible. And if wishing could make it all true by last week, let's add that we're not only late in toppling the Taliban and catching Osama bin Laden, but in deposing Saddam Hussein and destroying every terrorist network that might threaten us.

But we didn't do any of that when it might have been easier. And wishing it were easier now won't make it that way.

For reasons not entirely eccentric, something in all this keeps reminding me of the piano lessons I flailed my way through as a kid. Back then, in the late 1960s, I had a piano teacher, Doris Moore, who knew a thing or two about how life really works. Her constant message was that you got tough things done not by ignoring reality but by facing and genuinely dealing with it.

Her attitude was rooted in experience. Born around the turn of the century and horribly burned in a train wreck when she was a girl, Doris had faced her own tough times from early days. She began playing the piano to keep the scar tissue on her hands flexible enough that she would not be crippled for life. She went on playing because she had guts and passion and loved music, but that too took grit and persistence.

As a young woman, in an era when proper young women were discouraged from doing such things, she went to New York City, where she studied piano. It paid off. She became an accompanist to an American singer and they toured Europe. Then Doris returned to settle in the town where she was born, Rochester, N.Y., which is where I got to know her.

Doris had no children of her own, but for decades she gave music lessons to many. She was a kind and generous woman, but a tough teacher. On one of her two Steinway grand pianos she kept a box of tissues, which got heavy use by some of her pupils during the penitent discussions that usually ensued when it turned out they hadn't practiced enough. And she used to tell us something that made no sense to me at all when I was 10. "Listen to the music," she would say.

"But I am listening," I would protest.

"You aren't listening," Doris would reply, "or you wouldn't be making so many mistakes."

She held workshops some weeknights, at which her older pupils were expected to listen to each other. When I was admitted to this august circle, I found these workshops could be not only instructive but occasionally terrifying, because with Doris you couldn't bluff. She knew when you had put in the sweat and taken the time to get it right--and when you hadn't. She used to warn us that our generation wanted instant results, and that the world rarely works that way. Because we had instant coffee, she said, we expected instant success in other spheres. We wanted effortless mastery of a world so complex, she pointed out, that even the great painter Paul Cézanne lamented that he could not really see the colors.

Don't expect instant everything, she told us. You have to listen. You have to practice. And sometimes, even when you do all of that, you still have to wait.

Which brings us back to the war. Too many people seem to expect an instant-coffee conflict. Just like Doris Moore's baby-boomer students, they want instant everything, and they want it that way without having to reach for the Kleenex.

But war is not a fashion that you flaunt for a month and then discard because it's time for the next trend. Not if you aim to win. War is a deadly, devastating matter. People die. Refugees suffer. Anxiety rises high. This war, thrust uninvited on us, involves an especially complex fight, and it is one we must win before we can ever be safe again. President Bush warned us last month--while we cheered him on--that this will likely be a long campaign. It is entirely reasonable that we should debate tactics and timing, but not to the exclusion of reality.

Waging war is certainly different from making music. But what the two have in common is that it can take a lot of sweat and persistence and even pain to achieve the ease and harmony--the security and peace--that you long for. Doris Moore died years ago, and were she still alive I doubt she'd be putting herself forward as an expert on politics and battle. But her creed--that you can't cheat the truth by ignoring it--has much to recommend it in any endeavor.

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays on OpinionJournal.com and in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America."