It had rebuilt or replaced all but one of the ships hit in the Japanese surprise attack, added enormously to its military arsenal - largely through its navy and air force, for that is how overseas wars would be won - and swept across the Pacific, pushing back an enemy whose own military was once thought to be so awesome that it could control half the world.

The war was going well enough that on the eve of the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor, U.S. forces took on a fierce Japanese defensive position at Guadalcanal, the largest of the Solomon Islands northeast of Australia, and crushed it, killing 400 enemy fighters.

The United States could have paused at that point to take stock, infuse some morale in the country and its armed forces, and commemorate the enormous loss of a year earlier. It didn't.

On Dec. 7, 1942, the U.S. government held an official "day of work." Factories ran through the night to produce more warplanes. Newspapers filled their pages with stories of battles in exotic places. And in Washington, a plan was unveiled for the government to assume control of all food production and manpower in the economy.

The threat to America remained so great that the idea of state controls went unchallenged, and mostly unremarked. There was so little to say about the anniversary that President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose to spend his day quietly at work, leaving the job of stirring public sentiment to his great ally, Winston Churchill, who marked the solemn occasion with a radio address.

The war in the Pacific, Churchill said, was being won because it had to be won. The memory of Pearl Harbor, and its 2,400 dead, demanded no less. "Retribution has always been sure," he said. "It is now growing near."

Although the war would go on for nearly three more years, with horrible losses, the United States and its Allies were so committed to their purpose, so clear in their ends, that the means were not questioned. If the government had to manage food distribution, or run over small countries, or kill 400 opponents in a day, it didn't matter. An enormous cause demanded enormous sacrifice.

As Pearl Harbor faded from view, the war also became enormous in scope. Through 1943 and 1944, as smaller countries rushed to the Allies' side in Asia and Africa, the United States began to understand that the Second World War was about much more than retribution. It was about eradicating tyranny - fascist, colonial, tribal - from the far corners of the Earth, and building progressive societies in its wake.

In short, it was about reshaping history.

And yet, for all its strength, and for the admiration, even envy, that much of the world still feels for the American way, the United States has taken another historic moment and blundered. The last year of opportunity has slipped by without justice, triumph or even a lasting dose of retribution.

A year on, the country's enemy is regrouping, its allies are divided and its public is confused in its purpose. Tragically, Sept. 11 is fading behind all of them as a day of infamy, and nothing more. A day of chilling mass murder. A day of national, and international, revulsion. A day that will make Americans shudder for a generation. But ultimately, a day without legacy.

At the time, as U.S. troops massed in the Middle East and Central Asia, and there was talk of lightning strikes from Mogadishu to Mindanao, every conceivable option before the United States seemed to receive a hearing. Nuking Kandahar. Undermining the House of Saud. Toppling governments that did not swear their utmost loyalty. Trouncing smaller ones that just got in the way.

In a commemorative issue of Time magazine last September, essayist Lance Morrow wrote for the American mood when he demanded a higher mission than tactical retribution. A new American cause was needed, and nothing in the world, no military or economic force, no diplomatic effort or moral call, could stop it. "A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage," Mr. Morrow wrote. "What's needed is a unified, unifying, Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury - a ruthless indignation that doesn't leak away in a week or two, wandering off into Prozac-induced forgetfulness or into the next media sensation . . ."

Showing how far the United States might be willing to go, he borrowed an idea from the Iranian clerics who had long been his country's archenemy. "Let America explore the rich reciprocal possibilities of the fatwa," he wrote.

Yet the rage leaked away long ago, and with it America's chance to remake history in the way that it did in the Second World War.

The comparison may not seem fair. The war on terror is against an unknown enemy, not a state with possessions, a population and a professional military. Moreover, its setting is a world that is largely at peace, not one at war.

But the United States does know whom it is up against, where roughly that enemy is and who its supporters are. It also has the power to do something about it.

So why has this war gone so badly?

Tactically, after helping to topple a third-rate militia in Afghanistan, its military has been reduced to a floundering and, at $30-million (U.S.) a day, irrationally expensive manhunt. Osama bin Laden and his top people have vanished, by many accounts into the tribal sands of northwestern Pakistan, where the United States is afraid to wage war. True, al-Qaeda has failed to deliver a second blow to America. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and a synagogue bombing on the Tunisian island of Djerba are the closest it has come.

But the organization is clearly not down and out. A Washington Post report last month said two of Mr. bin Laden's key lieutenants are safe in Iran. One of his sons, Saad, is widely assumed to be taking over the organization, probably from a base in the Pashtun tribal lands that straddle the Pakistani-Afghan border. If he had to move, Somalia and Yemen would make good homes, now that the Bush administration seems unwilling to run them over. The organization's wealth is also safe, stashed in gold and safely hidden in despotic vaults like Sudan that are beyond the reach of American-led sanctions. Like the Mafia, al-Qaeda will be back.

Strategically, the war on terror has fared far worse. Much of the sympathy the United States enjoyed after Sept. 11 has dried up, leached away into the cracked soil of resentment in the Arab Middle East, continental Europe and much of the developing world.

For all that people in those places admire in the United States - its culture, technologies and international success - they have come to see in the Bush administration a global bully that demands the world stand by its side, yet remains unwilling to make concessions on something so dear to Europe as the Kyoto Protocol, or as offensive to Arab nations as Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

This is a stunning turnaround from where America stood in the world right after Sept. 11. At that time, the United States was presented with a unique alliance of nations, driven by fear more than principle, but one not seen in decades.

Condolences and condemnation poured in from the likes of Syria, Libya and Iran, as the enraged giant looked set to roll across national borders to root out al-Qaeda. The allegiance of Pakistan and the emerging nations of Central Asia are taken for granted now, but their days of decision were difficult, defining moments in each of their histories. Back then, they knew if they didn't co-operate fully, their nation could be finished.

In his State of the Union address in January, President George W. Bush gave the world even more clarity. A battle line was drawn. Three countries, Iraq, Iran and North Korea, were put on notice. And everyone else was given terms cast with boyish simplicity: You were either with the United States or with the terrorists.

Since then, all clarity has dissipated.

The Bush administration's troubles in isolating Iraq are well known, but it has had no more success on its other diplomatic fronts.

Iran has not only carried on as usual, its relationship with some of America's newer friends - Russia, China and a range of moderate Muslim countries such as Malaysia - has flourished as well. Other proud sponsors of terror, Libya and Sudan, also are enjoying a diplomatic renaissance, with European assistance.

In each case, allies that ex-pressed horror over Sept. 11 have refused to help the United States marginalize a so-called evil regime. The bizarre regime of Kim Jong-il in North Korea has done even better, reopening a dialogue with the very Bush administration that once la-belled it a sponsor of terror, master of famine and possessor of weapons of mass destruction.

If America has lost these battles overseas, it is also losing the war at home, where rage leaked away the moment the nation's obsession turned from retribution to reflection, to victims, heroes and mourning.

In his State of the Union address, Mr. Bush called on Americans and their allies to embrace a time of sacrifice and consider a war without end. "History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom's fight," he said.

Yet consider how fleeting America's war has been. A Pearl Harbor type of purple American fury? Try a U.S. President who had to set aside his war plans this summer to tour forest fires in the American West. A raging public? Try a nation obsessed through August with a threatened baseball strike.

The mighty giant has slumped back in its sofa of postmodern complacency, just seven months -- the equivalent of one baseball season -- after Mr. Bush told Americans that they had the privilege to fight freedom's fight.

While the United States has far less to show for 2002 than it did for 1942, it has not left the world unaffected.

Outside Afghanistan, it has placed its forces in the southern Philippines, Georgia and Uzbekistan, and built air bases across central Asia. Politically, it has thrown unquestioning support behind dictators such as Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, who a year ago were treated with scorn. And it has ramped up military aid to countries such as Colombia and Indonesia, having abandoned the glimmer of democracy that shaped U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s.

In the wake of Sept. 11, there have been no mass uprisings despite Mr. bin Laden's videotaped appeals for revolution. Africa, a continent known for upheaval, has seen only a couple of fizzled coup attempts while the one in Venezuela didn't last the weekend. Even in the Middle East there has been nothing to suggest ordinary Arabs see Mr. bin Laden as anything more than an outlawed folk hero, a sort of Billy the Kid. They don't want to spill blood for him. They just want the poster.

Here may be where the United States's greatest failure has been -- that in places where it could strengthen friendships and pressure adversaries, it has let history slip by. While it hectored the isolated -- the Arafats, Mugabes and Castros of the world -- to get serious about freedom, it turned a blind eye to the growing tyranny in front-line states such as Pakistan and Uzbekistan, where its forces are stationed.

It claimed to want to lead a new world, but then rejected trade ideas from Africa, financial restructurings from South America and the bold Canadian-sponsored idea of an International Criminal Court. Not since before Pearl Harbor, when the world mattered much less to American interests, has the United States been so dismissive toward the rest of the world.

This time, if the United States is to win the war, it will need to begin anew, with a fatter carrot and a thicker stick.

One lesson already can be taken from Afghanistan. In 11 months of bombing and hunting, the United States has not only failed to come up with much, it has also let down the Afghan people.

They were promised much more than an end to the Taliban. They were told the world would help end the economic misery, social repression and political anarchy that helped give rise to the Taliban, and before it a rapacious mujahedeen.

At an aid donors conference in Tokyo last January, the world's richest countries -- Arabs included -- promised $4.5-billion (U.S.) to Afghanistan over the next five years. So far, only one-third of the $1.8-billion pledged for this year has arrived, and most of it has gone to emergency aid, not development projects designed to move Afghanistan forward.

The same is true across much of the developing world, where the United States, for all its fears of the world, continues to be tightfisted. While America has long been the least generous industrial country, in terms of foreign aid as a share of its economic output, it had the chance to follow a new course last spring when international aid donors met in Monterrey, Mexico. A new message could have been sent to Somalia, Yemen and Indonesia -- to the countries were al-Qaeda hides, or may yet hide.

Instead, the United States opted for the old course, as did Canada and other major donors, who collectively said that after a decade of unprecedented economic growth in which more than $2-trillion (U.S.) of wealth was created, there was no new money for the world's two billion poor. At least no more than a token amount.

This new order was not dissimilar from the old order that emerged after the Persian Gulf War - one with a dominant superpower, a politically vocal but economically co-operative Middle East, a disgruntled Third World and a few emerging regional powers such as China that have yet to tip the balance. It's a comfortable status quo for Americans. It's a status quo that terrorists can jolt, but ultimately one they cannot derail.

A U.S. attack on Baghdad could, though, and not necessarily for the worse. A strike on Iraq, which seems more and more likely, would be far more ambitious than anything the United States has done in Afghanistan, or elsewhere.

But it is the aftermath that would have greater consequences. A pro-Washington regime in Baghdad could trigger another war with Iran. It could marginalize the Saudis, and lead to more backlash from their soil. It could drive a deep wedge between North America and Europe.

On the other hand, toppling Mr. Hussein could provide a model of reform for people in other Arab states, and a reasonable threat to dictators everywhere. From an American point of view, it would send a message that modern values of freedom, liberty and human rights have real value -- enough that dictators who suppress them will not survive and that nations aspiring to them will prosper.

Much of the transition, though, would depend on how the United States chooses to manage its role in what would become a very unsettled world, as unsettled as at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It would have to do more than it has done for the countries where its troops are now stationed. It would have to begin shaping history by accepting interests beyond its own, by investing heavily in those places that share its broad vision and by using its massive military force when necessary to protect that vision.

This was true in the years after Pearl Harbor. In 45 months of war, the United States spent today's equivalent of $4.5-trillion (U.S.) and lost 407,000 lives. It then oversaw, and financed, the most ambitious reconstruction project the world had ever seen. The Marshall Plan came together in one year, and from 1948 to 1952 dispensed $13.15-billion (U.S.) - $83.2-billion in current dollars -- in aid to Europe.

In those years, America had a greater mission than retribution. Its reconstruction plan gave rise to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and half a century of international development that was based on the premise of a common future.

Seven months ago, in his State of the Union address, Mr. Bush made an eloquent case for the United States to reclaim such a cause from the ashes of Sept. 11. "In a single instant," he said, "we realized that this will be a decisive decade in the history of liberty, that we've been called to a unique role in human events."

But in the year since terror changed America, the United States has lost sight of its perceived role in changing the world. At home, Americans have disengaged themselves from the war, retreating to their protected and comfortable domestic world. Abroad, its allies have slinked away from a shared purpose, perhaps feeling that they never will have a true partnership with the United States. And remarkably, the Bush administration has recoiled from the common cause it once espoused.

This time, it is alone and confused. The purple fury is gone. The Pearl Harbor moment has passed. This time, the world's greatest power seems willing to prove that history does not have to repeat itself.