COLUMN LEFT : Losing the War on the Home Front : Where is the greatness if we’re the ones who liberated Kuwait but lost New York?

We’ve won the war. It was not a war that I thought we needed to fight, but once we were in, I wanted us to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Well, we’ve done that in a way that exceeds almost everyone’s wildest expectations. The reaction has been predictable. The other morning, for example, I heard a famous anchorman say that America is once again being seen as a strong, “can do” nation. He, like many others, is looking at this war as our springboard back to national greatness. It’s as if, after Vietnam, we said: “Wait till next year,” and this is next year.

But have we really shored up national greatness with this war? We’re all happy now, but it’s a little like having watched your favorite team win a game 63-0. You’re glad you’ve won, but you’re not nearly as emotionally engaged as you would have been had you come from 10 points behind in the last quarter.

I’m not knocking how we won. There is no question that the Joint Chiefs and the Central Command developed and executed a brilliant strategy and that our vast array of modern weaponry was dazzlingly and brutally effective. I’m simply wondering here how permanent an impact this experience is apt to have on our national will to face the hard things in our national life.

Does greatness come only from enormous military power and the willingness to use it? Does greatness not also require some large measure of national wisdom? Wisdom deals not just with the here and now, but also with who we have been and what we are becoming.

The here and now suggests that we remain fixated on our international muscle and stay deeply involved in the Middle East. Wisdom, it seems to me, requires that we remember the robust economy, the broad and solid educational system and the high human aspirations that were the sources of this nation’s strengths in earlier decades of this century.

But the country is in recession now and our states are $10 billion in debt. We have adults who need jobs and children who urgently require better education. We have roads that are crumbling and bridges that are falling down. We have some cities in crisis and as a result, a lot of people are living lives filled with terrible agony.

We need to have the courage and the staying power to look homeward. Where is the greatness if our generation is the one that liberated Kuwait City and lost New York? We can be happy now, and proud of the members of our armed services. But we have not yet earned the right to be proud of ourselves.