April 18, 2002 -- MILITARY theorists regard Hannibal's victory at Cannae as the most perfect battle ever fought. Yet, I have no doubt that, when the news reached Carthage, the pundits of the day leaned against the columns in the marketplace - in the comfortable shade - and declared that Hannibal should have sent in the elephants earlier, on the other flank, and, anyway, he should have defeated those Romans months before.

Following the remarkable American campaign in Afghanistan, our own legions of pundits are on the attack. Always ready to believe the worst of our military and the best of our most hateful enemies, these men and women are the dreariest, most feckless form of terrorists, bent on the destruction of reputations and the literary assassination of anyone who appears remotely heroic.

And there are real heroes out there. I've seen them. But they weren't posing on camera or bleeding ink.

Scribbling from the comfort of their offices or barking from the safety of TV studios, the pundit platoon's target of the moment is Gen. Tommy Franks. In the authoritative view of those who never served in uniform and who never got closer to Afghanistan than an ethnic restaurant, Gen. Franks failed, time after time, to be sufficiently aggressive. Because of his timidity and incompetence, the stay-at-homes insist, Osama bin Laden escaped.

They imply that, somehow, we lost the war, when the reality is that we did what even our closest allies doubted we could do, conquering a warrior state with a speed greater than that achieved by the Mongol hordes (who did not worry about collateral damage).

Would I personally have done things differently than Gen. Franks, had I been in charge? Yes. But I also recognize that it's the easiest thing in the world for a retired lieutenant colonel living in an American suburb to second-guess the man on whose shoulders countless lives and the fate of nations depended.

A few things must be said firmly.

* First, the notion that all a general has to do is to give a command or click on a mouse to make things happen perfectly is as false as a columnist's courage. Even the finest military is unwieldy, unevenly responsive, and nearly as dangerous to itself as to the enemy.

Those aren't paper airplanes and toy guns - our friendly-fire deaths are not evidence of incompetence so much as of our tremendous lethality. On the best of days, training in Texas can turn deadly. War kills with abandon. Even now, generals must make fateful decisions with imperfect information. The battlefield is always clearest after the fighting is over.

* Second, Gen. Franks inherited a military machine and mindset that did, indeed, suffer from the play-it-safe legacy of the Clinton years. In our country, military leaders are not independent. They take their cues from the civilian leadership. And for eight years there had been an absolute prohibition on serious combat and on any casualties, whatsoever. Given the inevitable institutional inertia, it's astonishing we came as far as we did as fast as we did after Sept. 11. I can promise you that Gen. Franks had to do a fair amount of horse-whipping to make anything happen at all.

* Third, I personally am drawn to Rummy the Ravager, our merrily-aggressive Secretary of Defense. I believe that ferocious, overwhelming violence, swiftly applied, is usually the best answer and always a good answer. But the last thing our military needs is internal unanimity.

The best solutions come from honest debates within the system before the command decision is made. If, as reported, Gen. Franks and Donald the Deadly didn't see things with perfect unity of vision, it may have prevented us from rushing headlong into some very bad decisions.

* Fourth, when I voiced my own concerns about Gen. Franks to one of his subordinates several months ago, my old friend gave me a tongue-lashing. Assigned to the general's staff, he told me bluntly that I had it plain wrong. His defense of Gen. Franks was positively zealous.

This matters. Good officers aren't bootlickers, and you may trust me that generals do not earn such respect automatically. When a leader's subordinates believe in him and defend him, that leader, whether a corporal or a theater commander, deserves the benefit of the doubt. Franks is respected by the men and women who have to pay the butcher's bill. Who should we believe, the troops or the talking heads?

The real test of any military isn't whether or not it makes mistakes. Every military screws up, and the fundamental goal is just to be sufficiently better than the other guy to kick his butt from Cleveland to Kandahar. The true test is whether or not a military organization learns from its mistakes.

And the U.S. armed forces in the Afghan campaign learned with impressive speed, improvising their way to what I can only term a stunning victory. They made mistakes. But they never made the same mistake twice. In the real world, that indicates a superb military organization.

WHEN next the pundits whine that we failed to do X or to capture Y, pause and remember what those same faculty-lounge lions and green-room tigers told us back in September: According to their unanimous conviction, the Afghans were 10 feet tall and our troops didn't have a prayer.

Any intervention in Afghanistan was doomed, they warned, and we were foolish to even think about it. Now they're declaring that our lightning victory was somehow incompetent.

Oh, really?

Our forces brought down a brutal regime, shattered the most extensive terrorist network in history, and put global terrorism onto the defensive. And they did it with dazzling speed. We should be cheering, not jeering. And the truth is that the American people know we've done well. But the pundits find it unbearable.

Next time you hear how inept our leaders are, ask yourself just how many battles that media "expert" fought or how many years that print critic served in uniform. Those who never did a thing for our country themselves rush to criticize the men and women who risk their lives to defend us.

All those talking heads remind me of myself as a young rock musician, before I joined the Army. I had no talent, but, Jesus, I was loud.

I'll take the worst soldier we've got in Afghanistan over the best critic any day. Gen. Franks has served his country to the best of his considerable abilities. And, as any old Persian rug-maker will tell you, only God is perfect.

Ralph Peters is a retired military officer who specialized in the wreckage of other people's wars. He is the author of "Fighting For The Future: Will America Triumph?"