Such tactics suggest we no longer seek a military triumph over Islamic jihad -- if we ever did. Had we prosecuted such a war, it would be over by now. The president would have directed the military to eradicate, freeze or neutralize jihadi threats where they exist, from Iran to Syria, from Gaza to Fallujah. Concurrently, we would have closed our own borders as a post-Sept. 11 security precaution, and implemented an immigration policy designed to avoid repeating the European example of Islamization through massive Muslim immigration or, as some are calling it, "reverse colonization."

But no. Such a war on terror long ago gave way to the Struggle to Make Everyone Think We're Swell. In this no-win fight, we must watch what we say -- as when the government "distances" itself from an official's frank characterization of three suicides at Guantanamo Bay as a jihadi "PR stunt." And we must watch what we do -- as when we repeatedly send our military on dangerous house-to-house missions with restrictive rules of engagement rather than using air power. In a war in which an interrogation could save a city, we rewrite our interrogation rules to make sure that it won't. "If this debate were limited to what's best for interrogation purposes, the decision (about whether to soften interrogation techniques) would be pretty easy," a senior Defense Department official told The New York Times. "But then you have to look at what we lose diplomatically.'"

Why? What are we, Liechtenstein? We sure act like it. The Washington Times' Tony Blankley recently noted the defeatism in America's about-face with jihadist Iran -- the looming front in the war. By offering non-military nuclear technology or else threatening non-military sanctions, the Bush administration seems to have acquiesced to what Blankley describes as "the only 'respectable' position" among both European and American elites: namely, "the absolute exclusion of a military option."

If true, this would mean that the already inadequately titled "war on terror" would no longer refer to "war" at all. And that would leave only ....