JESSE WALKER says that the war on terror isn’t really going that well. He scores some points, especially on homeland security. But I’m not sure that whether we are “safer” is really the measure of progress. Being safer is an endpoint, but progress toward that endpoint doesn’t necessarily produce a smoothly incremental increase in safety. Quite the contrary: the most dangerous time is probably when we’re clearly winning, and they’re utterly desperate.

UPDATE: Andrew Dalton has a slightly different take.