I know: There are weeks like that. The problem is that it is This Week and there doesn't seem to be much anyone can do about any of these things.

No one has found a cure for the common cold. Nobody can figure out whether this new strain of pneumonia is God's or man's invention. The economy seems to be waiting on the war, and the war is going on regardless.

I know all of these messes will get resolved eventually—they always do somehow—but we will bear the consequences of their happening.

All in all, that makes it hard to get up on Monday morning to face the rest of the week.

In many ways it reminds me of the days before Pearl Harbor.

Although that's a long time ago and my memory is no longer all that it used to be, I do recall with some clarity the feeling of doom that seemed to pervade the air in the weeks before the attack on Hawaii took place.

Then everyone seemed to be aware something terrible was going to happen.

But, it was a secret. Japanese diplomats were still in the United States, and everyone figured as long as they were in Washington, D.C., nothing was going to happen.

Bad guess. That was all part of the plan. It was all part of a dream into which we had lulled ourselves and from which we would be rudely awakened.

We were stupid, but, in retrospect, it was understandable.

It had been a long time since anyone had threatened the country with anything and then suddenly there it was.

In 2003 the preemptive strike against Iraq is no secret. Rather, the secret seems to be the reason it's happening.

In effect, the president has told us not to worry about things like that. God is on our side and we're bringing freedom to the Middle East, even if the Middle East seems not to want it.

Congress some months ago handed the president what he has taken as a blank check, as a writ letting him decide when and where he can launch a war.

Well, we get what we pay for, or in this case, elect. We get a Congress that seems to want to lie down and play dead and a president who is only too happy to let them.

So, just as with Pearl Harbor, we are as much at fault as are our leaders. We've been lulled into the same kind of dream, expecting the rest of the world to let us alone because, well, just because we are what we are: big and successful.

Launching the nation into a war is not something to be taken lightly or without careful consideration of the consequences. But the consequences from this war seem to be about as dimly perceived as the reasons it is being undertaken. There have been vague references to a year or two of occupation—assuming, of course, we defeat the Iraqis—but no one seems to know for certain or to care much.

I guess we aren't supposed to ask questions like that, or maybe it's my cold that makes it hard for me to hear the answers.

But on this particular Monday morning, it seems to me the world has slipped on its axis, that everything is somehow off-center, that even though a lot of people perceive this, they either won't or can't or are afraid to do anything about it.

Of such is tragedy born, whether it be Monday, Tuesday, Saturday or Sunday or by the events of next week, when another Monday morning rolls around.

By then, at least, my cold may be better.

I'm not sure about the rest of the world, though.

—Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to The Sun.