VIRGINIA POSTREL responds to those doom-laden reporters who say that the war is going to be longer than “some people” expected:

Who are these “some Americans” who expected a war shorter, and with fewer casualties, than the L.A. riots? . . .

Yes, we’re all more optimistic than we were before the Persian Gulf War, which began with post-Vietnam fears of tens of thousands of Americans dead and years of brutal fighting. But optimism is merely relative. And “less than three months” is not “less than three days.”

What we saw today was that this is a real war. Nasty, brutal, and we can only hope, short. All we’ve been promised is victory—and that’s a promise, among other things, to persist when things get tough.

Indeed. It seems to me that it was the media who were declaring the war won on Friday night, only to declare it lost by Sunday. We saw the same kind of thing with Afghanistan, of course.

UPDATE: People seem to get this. Antiwar protests in Britain are shrinking, according to this report:

The turnout was smaller than last month’s rally by about 1 million people, a diverse gathering that included many first-time protesters. By contrast, Saturday’s crowds consisted largely of the leftist and Muslim groups at the core of the antiwar movement.

Turnout was down worldwide. But mostly, I’m just happy to see Big Media notice who’s at the “core” of the antiwar movement. Meanwhile, Blair’s rising in the polls:

After weeks of declining public approval, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s image has improved among Britons, according to a poll reported Saturday. The ICM Research poll found 56% believed Blair’s dogged support of the Bush administration’s confrontation with Iraq had been “about right,” while 26% thought he had been “too firm.”

A few weeks ago, only about a third of those Britons polled backed the government’s Iraq policy, including sending 45,000 troops to the Persian Gulf.

Blair’s personal approval rating also has climbed, by 11 percentage points to 40%. The shift reflects the apparent tendency to close ranks with the government once troops are in combat. Only 13% of those polled advocated an immediate end to the war, while 82% wanted the coalition to finish what it had started in Iraq.

Seems that ordinary people are less excitable than the media.