ASHINGTON

The most famous story of the Western world, the prototype of all tales of human conflict, Barbara Tuchman writes in "The March of Folly," is the Wooden Horse.

Despite repeated warnings, the Trojans relaxed their guard and let their fortress be breached.

After the Trojans feasted and fell asleep, the hidden Greeks emerged. "Mad with murder," Homer wrote, they wielded their swords and hacked men and women to "the last thrust."

The moral: Invaders can also win by cunning, deception and their adversaries' complacency and trust.

We are chilled as we learn more about how the Middle East terrorists mad with murder breached our walls and lived brazenly among us for years, mocking our hospitality, exploiting our freedoms. Training at our flight schools and at Gold's Gym; casing Logan Airport; loudly warning that "America's going to see bloodshed" while spending up to $300 apiece on lap dances and drinks at a Daytona Beach strip club, where they left behind a copy of the Koran.

Last spring, when the president was letting Dick Cheney run the country, he also put him in charge of coordinating a domestic response to terrorism, saying that the threat of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons was "very real" but "not immediate." No one ever heard about that group again.

On "Meet the Press" Sunday, the vice president conceded that the unspeakable air attack had caught the government by surprise, even though "there had been information coming in that a big operation was planned."

It's hard to know why our government was so clueless.

The tactics of warriors in the mountains of the treacherous Khyber Pass, where we may soon send American troops to war, no longer include such medieval barbarities as cannibalism and giving the breasts of captured virgins to senior Mongol commanders.

But the guileful guerrilla methods of Central Asian warriors have stayed the same since the 13th century. Consider this description by Peter Hopkirk in "The Great Game": "The sheer speed of their horse- borne archers, and the brilliance and unfamiliarity of their tactics, caught army after army off balance. Old ruses, long used in tribal warfare, enabled them to rout greatly superior numbers at negligible loss to themselves. Time and again their feigned flight from the battlefield lured seasoned commanders to their doom."

Why were we so blind? Osama bin Laden recently made threats in the London press. Islamic zealots have repeatedly shown their willingness to get to heaven — a heaven where 70 virgins await each "martyr" — by committing homicide even as they committed suicide. They already tried to topple the World Trade Center eight years earlier. Much of the Arab street abhors the United States. The kamikaze pilots during World War II showed how easy it is to turn a plane into a weapon. Middle East C.I.A. analysts, not even required to speak Arabic, should at least be expected to have as much imagination as Hollywood screenwriters.

The F.B.I., C.I.A. and I.N.S. knew some of the terrorists were in the country, but their turf battles helped the terrorists slip through the cracks. A chorus of experts, former lawmakers and journalists had been warning that the U.S. should have a homeland defense plan.

This week, when Bush diplomats should have been riveted on the hard work of building an alliance against terrorism, Under Secretary of State John Bolton went to Moscow to insist that the reluctant Russians come around on missile defense.

As long as they cling so tenaciously to their cold-war theology, it will be hard for the Bush crowd to engender the trust we need outside the country and accomplish the radical revamping we need inside.

The man who during the campaign mistook the Taliban for a band and could not identify the leader of Pakistan has come a long way. The president recognizes the epic and daunting nature of his quest to rid the world of evildoers.

Speaking to senators last Thursday, Mr. Bush asked, What's the sense of sending a $2 million missile to hit a $10 tent and a camel in the keister?

One might also ask: What's the sense of rushing to create a $60 billion defense shield to protect against a Trojan horse?