To the lists of the enemies of the West — Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the tyrannical nations of Iran and North Korea, and others — we can now add a new foe: instant gratification.

Think of how we live now. One can now send an e-mail in New York. An instant later it arrives halfway across the world. A second later the recipient responds. Text messaging via cell phones has brought even faster access to information. With a Blackberry, an individual can find restaurant reviews on five neighborhood eateries in quicker time than it takes to walk across a broad city street to peek in the restaurant’s window.

Our enemies, on the other hand, have the luxury of time. No question, the insurgents in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon take full advantage of the tools of the computer and technological revolutions. But they operate in the time frame of history. For Osama bin Laden, the reference points are the rise of Mohammed in the early 7th Century, the Crusades in the first few centuries of the second millennia, and, among other events, the expulsion of Muslims from Spain and Portugal. For Hezbollah and the Shia leadership in Iran and Lebanon, the Battle of Karbala in 680 and the destruction of the crusader kingdoms loom large.

For those in the West, by contrast, the time frame is in days, weeks, and months. Israel attempts to rout out Hezbollah’s irregular fighters over the course of five summer weeks and is almost universally dubbed the “loser” in the struggle. “Israel lost,” wrote John O’Sullivan in a Chicago Sun-Times piece essentially friendly to Israel, “Though it had the overt support of the United States and the covert support of Europe and Middle Eastern governments for almost five weeks, it failed to gain its main objectives.” Howard Kurtz, the press critic of the Washington Post, captured the mood of the press on the CNN program “Reliable Sources,” “The conventional wisdom in the press seems to be that … this was a setback, even a loss for Israel.”

This is not to suggest that the debate in Israel over tactics employed in the recent campaign is the wrong one to have, just as American military tactics in Iraq can always be improved upon. Nevertheless, history demonstrates that even in the best case scenarios, conflicts between conventional armies, such as those of Israel and America, and irregular forces take time.

The 20th century model for the defeat of an insurgency is the British during the Malayan Emergency. Communist fighters began their armed effort in 1948. Sir Robert Thompson, the British leader in Malaya, employed a variety of British forces in an all-out effort to defeat the enemy. It included the use of both commando forces and efforts to win over the populace with food, medical care, and other services. The fighting went on in earnest through the 1950s with both Australia and New Zealand contributing troops. The time allowed Britain to foster Malayan independence, which was eventually proclaimed in 1957. It was not until 1960 that the war was deemed over. “In Malaya, it took 70,000 British Commonwealth troops, backed by 180,000 local forces, twelve years and perhaps $2.5 billion to stifle an insurgency waged by 8,000 guerrillas,” writes Charles Simpson in “Inside the Green Berets: The Story of the U.S. Army Special Forces.” This was a 12-year war, and it is considered a success story. Would world sentiment and public opinion permit such an effort to go on today?

The Philippine Insurrection is all but a footnote in history known mostly by enthusiasts of Douglas McArthur, whose father General Arthur McArthur served as the military governor there. For more than three years, America routinely deployed up to 70,000 troops against the enemy. America faced early defeats and bloody skirmishes.When the conflict came to a close on July 4, 1902, the conflict cost 4,234 dead and 2,818 wounded. The country was stabilized. Later, in the 1950s, Ramon Magsaysay, leading an independent Philippines, defeated a Communist insurgency that lasted several years.

The lesson here is that in almost all cases conflict between large-scale modern armies and scattered bands of insurgents and irregular forces takes time. In such cases, the enemy has the advantage of achieving economy of forces even when facing a powerful foe. The Hezbollah fighters or Iraqi insurgents can concentrate forces where the stronger force is weak. A classic example of this was Hezbollah’s initial kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers. Another advantage in both cases is the willingness of the enemy to hide among civilians.The presence of civilians, at best, makes rooting the enemy out more difficult and time consuming, and most often creates a propaganda advantage in the court of world opinion.

It’s possible that America and even Israel will lose the appetite to expend money and lives over time to defeat enemies in the Islamic world. That would mean victory to those for whom the dates 1099, 1187, 1291 (the dates of the founding of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Saladin’s capture of Jerusalem, and the Fall of Acre) are more important than today, yesterday, and last week.

Mr. Gitell is a contributing editor of the Sun.