The world held its breath for 25 days waiting for the inevitable, and on Sunday the inevitable happened.

The United States and its primary ally, Great Britain, began what will be a long, difficult and costly endeavor -- bringing to justice Osama bin Laden and others who supported, directly and indirectly, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The targets of this operation, as defined by President Bush Sunday, are the Al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Wide support: The president made a point of stating early in his address that the United States and Great Britain have received pledges from Canada, Australia, Germany and France to join forces in this operation. More than 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and across Asia, he noted, granted air transit or landing rights and others shared intelligence. "We are supported by the collective will of the world," President Bush told the nation. That is as it should be and as it should remain.
This is not a war against the Afghan people, and it is certainly not a war against Islam. It is a war against terrorism, a terrorism that has shown its ugly face before, but never in such a horrible contortion as it did on September 11, when nearly 7,000 innocent lives were snuffed out in a matter of hours in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Somerset County, Pa.
The enemy: Osama bin Laden is the personification of this enemy, and he is an enemy who should not be underestimated. We will never know whether even he fully understood the impact that the attack on the World Trade Center would have. Could he have known that both buildings would be reduced to rubble? Could he have envisioned the enormous ripple effect this audacious act of terrorism would have on the U.S. and world economies?
But we do know, from his own words, that the events of September 11 pleased him, that he has an overwhelming hatred of America, that he makes no distinction between American soldiers and American office workers or airplane passengers and that he has a perverted understanding and unbridled contempt for American culture.
In an interview in May 1998 with John Miller, an ABC News correspondent, bin Laden said, "We have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier who is ready to wage Cold Wars and unprepared to fight long wars. This was proven in Beirut when the Marines fled after two explosions. It also proves they can run in less than 24 hours, and this was also repeated in Somalia."
Yesterday, in a pre-recorded statement released on Arab television within hours after the U.S. attack, bin Laden said: "These events have divided the whole world into two sides. The side of believers and the side of infidels, may God keep you away from them. Every Muslim has to rush to make his religion victorious."
That is a lie. It is bin Laden who is attempting to turn this into a war between Western nations and all Muslims, when it is truly only a battle between those who value freedom and a radical Islamic fundamentalism that says men are free to objectify all women and to murder anyone who does not fit their definition of a true believer.
Proud record: In contrast to bin Laden's claims, Americans have come to the aid of Muslims in Kuwait, when that nation was overrun by Saddam Hussein a decade ago, and to Muslims in Kosovo, when they were the targets of ethnic cleansing by Serbs five years ago. More recently, in the world of economics, the United States supported a bailout of Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation on Earth. Even as the United States is waging war against the Taliban, it is providing food and medicine for Afghan refugees.
As a nation, America has shown bin Laden to be a liar when he accuses the United States of waging war against all Muslims. The American people must now show that he is equally wrong when he accuses this nation of being soft, of being unprincipled and of lacking resolve.
What's ahead: The war against bid Laden and his ilk will not be quick or clean. There will be casualties unlike any we have seen in more than a generation. There will almost certainly be more acts of terror aimed at American civilians.
It is up to America to define itself at this moment in history. We can be the nation that bin Laden sees -- weak, corrupt and too ready to run. Or we can be the people described Sunday by President Bush in his call to battle, when he declared: "We will not waver, we will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail."
The president asks us to take the harder road, but the choice is easy.