ERADICATION A WILL-O'-THE-WISP

The Sleeping Bear Dunes run along the southeast shore of Lake Michigan. The
dunes themselves are part of a beautiful little patch of wilderness that 30
years ago was on the verge of being swallowed up by development. Much of the
credit for preserving the area belonged to Philip Hart, the Michigan senator
so widely respected by his colleagues that his name is now on one of the
buildings in which they work.

Toward the end his life, Hart reflected that when he first came to
Washington, he had wanted to save the world.

Then he realized he had better concentrate on saving his country.

After a few years, he limited his ambitions to saving his state. "Now," he
said, "I'm just trying to save the dunes."

Operation Infinite Justice, as it has been dubbed, has a noble aim: To rid
the world of terrorism.

Of course ridding the world of terrorism is an even more daunting goal than
ridding America of poverty or drugs. (It is perhaps worth noting that
America's politicians got into the habit of launching metaphorical wars at
about the same time they stopped declaring literal ones.)

Some fundamental strain in America's political culture is attracted to the
quixotic quest to rid the nation -- and indeed the world -- of all serious
imperfections. It was to that impulse in American life that President Bush
appealed when he quoted President Kennedy's promise to "bear any burden,"'
and "suffer any cost" in the fight to extend liberty to every corner of the
globe.

Those words, which sounded deeply anachronistic before Sept. 11, seemed for
a moment at least to take on new life, in the wake of so much suffering, and
the pent-up national energies that suffering appeared to release.

Infinite justice is a concept that is normally relegated to the realm of
religion, or to utopian political movements (such as communism) that are
clearly substitutes for traditional religious belief. Even the American
legal system -- the world's costliest and most ambitious -- rarely imagines
that anything close to true justice can be achieved by fallible human beings
in a complicated world. Most lawyers consider a good day any on which even a
little justice was done. Knowing how the world works, they realize it is
generally best to leave infinite justice in the hands of God.

It is true that Infinite Justice is only a name; nevertheless names help
create the reality they describe, especially in the world of politics. When
it declared a "war" on drugs, Congress passed laws whose explicit purpose
was to make America a drug-free nation.

In retrospect, it would have been far more sensible to attempt to lessen the
damage done by drugs, while recognizing that drug abuse will remain a
significant problem, rather than to commit the nation to an unattainable
goal, the pursuit of which has done more harm than, good.

Eradicating international terrorism is no more possible than eradicating
illicit drug use, or ridding America of poverty.

When dealing with problems whose existence is rooted in the very nature of
the world, realizing that these problems are not going to disappear in the
foreseeable future is the beginning of wisdom. Only then can we begin
to -consider which measures are worth the considerable burdens and costs
(which, despite JFK's stirring rhetoric, are not identical to "any" burden
or cost) a meaningful engagement with such problems is sure to impose.

Philip Hart, after all, never did save the world, or the nation, or even his
state.

He did, however, save the dunes.