AT WAR: Thus Far.

In the first two weeks of war, our coalition forces have advanced quickly toward Baghdad; secured Iraq's southern oil fields; captured several bridges over the Euphrates; and taken complete ownership of Iraqi airspace. We have lost no engagements with the enemy. In the months leading up to the war, many people worried that it would start with chemical-weapons deployments and missile attacks on Israel. These have not happened. While every loss is one too many, we allies have suffered only 73 casualties, and only 7 of our people have been taken as POWs. Military historian John Keegan sums up the campaign's progress: "It has secured most of the territory and facilities over which it needs to operate, has a secure base, has acquired its own resupply port, dominates the enemy, and is not threatened by large- scale civilian disorder."

If this is a quagmire, let's have more of it.

It is not one, of course. Yet the media are clearly caught up in their peculiar Vietnam nostalgia. The phrase "credibility gap" is enjoying a comeback. (Somehow the credibility in question is never that of the media themselves.) The prevailing line is that the war is going worse than the Bush administration had led us to expect. Journalists are judging the war the way they judge presidential debates and primaries - - on the basis not of actual achievements but of "expectations."

A few -- a very few -- advocates of regime change in Iraq did indulge in reckless predictions that a war would be a "cakewalk." Stray comments from Bush administration officials to that effect can also be collected. But this was not the dominant note in the pre-war debate. When opponents of war said that the risks were too high, the hawks' principal response was not to downplay those risks but to say that the risks of inaction were higher. The public was not sold a bill of goods. Polls showed that most people expected a war to last months, not days. It was possible, of course, to hope that the war would be over in days; but the military devised a plan that would work, and adapt, if it lasted longer.

A related contention is that the war has failed because the Iraqi people have not greeted us as liberators. But nobody predicted that they would do so before we liberated them -- and we have not yet done so. Most ordinary Iraqis do not know whether the regime will go or, if it will, how long it will take. They have lived in a "republic of fear" for decades. Now there is fear and confusion. Most Iraqis are not welcoming us, but they are not actively opposing us either.

Other, more credible criticisms of the military campaign have been made. The Turks have refused to let us open a northern front; our own diplomatic bungling may be partly responsible for this lack of cooperation. It would clearly have been better to have had more troops available at war's opening. But this latter criticism must be qualified. It takes time to move troops. American war planning had to take account of the diplomatic timetable, weather-related risks, military commitments elsewhere, and other factors as well as ideal troop levels. More troops are now arriving.

Another fair criticism is that we are showing excessive concern for Iraqi civilians, and even soldiers and infrastructure. We have gone well beyond the moral requirement to try to avoid civilian casualties. We have done so for some good reasons. Saddam Hussein wants higher casualty totals, in order to influence Arab, world, Iraqi, and American opinion. We do not want to so pulverize the country that it will be impossible to rebuild after the war. But to the extent our scrupulosity extends the length of the war, it may be self-defeating. There is a balance to be struck here, but it seems to us that we should be more concerned with the lives of our own troops. More force would produce more fear of resisting us -- not only among Iraqis, but in the governments of Syria and Russia.

But these criticisms and suggestions do not detract from our sense that the war has so far been a great success -- and that we will have greater success in the future. President Bush deserves credit for his steadfast leadership, especially his resolute refusal to pay much heed to the media. The public, too, deserves credit. Its resolve has not faltered either.

We do not know how long the war will last. We do not know how much it will cost; but even if it were several times the $75 billion the administration has requested for the first installment, it would be small in proportion to our economy -- and a small price for the elimination of the Iraqi regime.

Nor can we predict what horrors are in store from the dying Ba'athist regime. It may yet use the weapons it is not supposed to have. The regime's conduct of the war has fully vindicated the worst claims hawks have made about its essential character. Feigned surrenders; suicide bombings; executions of POWs; the use of civilians as human shields; the shooting of civilians: War crimes have been our foe's chief tactic. But that fact is a testament not only to his depravity but to his military weakness. We have not won yet. But victory is within sight.