I often have cause for misgivings about our progress in the war on terror, and about out prospects for victory. It very frequently occurs to me that we are not fighting as hard as we ought to be, nor nearly as smart. I see all around me grievous errors being committed at home and abroad. I see our borders, as porous as they ever were, beckoning to every fanatical enemy of civilization. I see the media’s refusal to recognize the vast network of jihad at work, insisting instead of focusing on a small group of Al Qaeda fighters presented as the only terrorists worth worrying about. A Muslim murderer may shoot up a Jewish organization’s offices, killing pregnant women while shouting that he is an angry Muslim killing Jews for Allah, and the press acts like he’s nothing more than a run of the mill kook. No jihad here, nothing to see, move along.

I see half the politicians in this country who seem to believe that the threat we face from fanatical Islamists is so remote that they can afford to play politics over the relatively mild measures thus far adopted to prevent further attacks. They thus feel free to demagogue the innocuous half-measures of the Patriot Act as a dangerous threat to civil liberty. They feel free to reveal to the press a secret program to track funding for terrorists. And they feel free to do all they can to hamstring the Administration in its war efforts overseas, maligning our troops as war criminals, emphasizing the difficulties they face and trumpeting every setback as if it were a victory.

I see our enemies, formerly knocked back on their heels by the vigor of America’s response to the attacks of 9-11, now resurgent, having recovered their courage in the face of this country’s diffident approach to the insurgency in Iraq and its pusillanimous response to threats such as Korea’s missile program and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. I hear our enemies threatening to rain destruction down upon us if we dare to brace them; and even when these threats come from insane fools without the wherewithal to make them good (yet), the fact that these petty tyrants feel safe in making them shows that they lack the proper respect and fear of consequences that a proper foreign policy over the past three or four years would have produced in them.

I see the world’s foremost supporter of Islamic terror, Iran, openly supporting the terrorist Hezbollah organization and pursuing headlong a program to develop nuclear weapons that would destabilize the Mideast and put our ally Israel in grave jeopardy, while the world seems afraid to do anything more than cluck its tongue and wags its finger. Even the ineffectual step of United Nations sanctions is apparently too strong an action for the world to stomach; we are thus left with resolutions calling for voluntary restraint on the mullahs’ part and empty threats of some vague future sanction.

I recall the gutless response of the world to the Muhammad cartoons, when the West bowed to the angry shrieks of the so-called “Muslim street,” refused to stand up for the Dutch publisher’s right to free expression, and instead showered criticism and opprobrium on them for daring to upset the Muslims.

America tolerates its purported ally Saudi Arabia to support thousands of Muslim schools that teach violent jihad against the West, and particularly America. And Britain goes so far as to tolerate the existence of such “madrassahs” within its own borders. There is evidence that the recently foiled grand scheme to blow up as many as nine commercial airliners between England and America was inspired and hatched in the mosques and Muslim schools on British universities.

And of course the situation in Iraq appears bleak, and the radical Islamic militias and terrorists continue to blow up their countrymen and our soldiers as the country appears to slide into civil war. Add to that Israel’s failure in its Lebanon war to destroy Hizbollah or to seriously degrade its capacity to launch rockets into Israel; yesterday, after a month of Israel’s best efforts, Hizbollah launched 250 rockets into Israel, a record effort. It now appears that Israel is being forced to accept a cease-fire that will leave Hizbollah in place in Lebanon, to re-arm and reorganize and to prepare for the next phase of its constant war against Israel.

So there is much cause for concern as we evaluate our successes in the War on Terror. Our enemies appear to be resurgent, almost triumphal, not so much because they have beaten us but because despite our best efforts for five years, they remain standing and capable of inflicting damage upon us and our interests around the world. And because so much of war is psychological, the very fact that we have not completely destroyed them looks like a victory. We thus look weak to our enemies in a time of crisis.

But this very appearance of weakness may turn out to be an unwitting trap for our enemies. Without intending to do so, the West is playing possum. Our current weakness is only apparent, not real. It results from a lack of resolve, from a disunited population that has not yet truly come to grips with the fact that we are in a fight for our survival. We thus fight with one hand behind our backs. Of course we look weak. But if our enemies rely too much on this merely apparent weakness and take reckless chances, they will only serve to unite the disunited, steel the shaky resolve, and clarify the confused minds of the West.

America will not stand by and watch another 9-11 happen without responding in awesome power. If America is again attacked in a similar way, or, God forbid, with some kind of nuclear weapon, by an enemy who believes we are incapable of effective response, that day will be the worst day in the history of the Islamic world, for our response will be fearsome. Any state or organization believed to be responsible will face a united America, with most of the Western world behind her.

Naturally, I hope that such a day never comes. I hope that our security forces, our intelligence agencies, and our armies, navies, and air forces will prevent any further serious attack on America, and that no more of our brothers and sisters must needlessly die. I hope we can avert every future attack and remain free from terrorisms grasp forever. But I do not believe that will happen. There are too many holes in the dike, and we have only so man fingers. It only takes one failure, after a hundred successes, for disaster to befall. If our enemies were smart, they would take the long approach. They would decline to confront us directly, attacking on the fringes and continuing to infiltrate the West, relying on demographic change and population shifts to accomplish the conquest of the West. But I believe that, as a result of our current appearance of weakness, our enemies will take reckless risks; they will continue to plan attacks on the American heartland, in the belief that we are on the run. And in doing so, they will fall into a trap that we have not even attempted to lay.