ALMOST A YEAR ago, as much in frustration at the character of the national debate on terror as anything else, I noted on these pages that two distinct arguments were being advanced, often simultaneously, about the War on Terror and al-Qaeda.

The first was that the whole notion of a threat to Britain was “phoney”, a vast exaggeration of the capacities of an organisation that putting to one side the odd atrocity or two, was essentially defunct and, furthermore, this false “danger” was being stoked up deliberately by the Government as an alibi for curtailing civil liberties and locking up the innocent.

The second assertion, sometimes made by the very same people who insisted that al-Qaeda was but a “phantom” institution, was that the crass ineptitude of George W. Bush, augmented by his hapless ally Tony Blair, meant that the Western democracies were “losing” the War on Terror.

As it was not difficult to point out, there were some tensions in these positions. If the War on Terror is based on the false premise of a force that does not really exist, then it is highly improbable that we could be being defeated by it. Last year, though, I sought to make an alternative case. It was that the War on Terror was real and that, by any objective standards, the democracies were winning. In the aftermath of the London bombings, perhaps paradoxicall y, I want to make the same case. Indeed, strange as it might seem, it is precisely because of the assaults on the capital’s transport network last week that this stance is stronger, not weaker.

That al-Qaeda is a real threat is surely now uncontroversial. It would be pleasing if the dozens of commentators who have appeared in this and other newspapers to insist that a terrorist attack on London was a fictional idea invented by Mr Blair, David Blunkett and then Charles Clarke to justify their long-held desire to rip the Magna Carta to shreds would write a collective apology. I will not hold my breath waiting for it to happen.

The critics will, and already have, moved on to a different theme; namely the idea that al-Qaeda had more or less disappeared and given up after being ejected from Afghanistan in November 2001 and that it was only the intervention in Iraq that subsequently revived it. It is not worth the effort of attempting to reason with these people. They are beyond help and should be left to their delusions. Remember that al-Qaeda sympathisers continued to plan attacks in Spain even after the Socialist Government had, so unwisely, decided to withdraw all of its troops from the Iraqi desert.

For the truth has always been that al-Qaeda is a fundamentally reactionary response to the perceived decline of the Muslim world. It is an attempt to recreate the imagined circumstances of mid-15th-century Europe; modern controversies such as the emergence of the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, the creation of the state of Israel and the removal of Saddam Hussein from Baghdad are irrelevant to Osama bin Laden and his followers. These are, at most, additional “proof” that an infidel exists whom the believers must conquer or eliminate.

Al-Qaeda as a movement was as alive last Wednesday night as it demonstrated on Thursday morning. The intelligence reports received in Downing Street and the Home Office never strayed from warning that an attack here was very probable. Mr Blunkett said in a speech on Friday that not a single day passed when he was Home Secretary when he did not think of the possibility. Mr Clarke implied the same when he sought to persuade Parliament to approve his derided, but in retrospect necessary, scheme for terrorist suspect control orders.

Yet the fact that an al-Qaeda affiliate managed to carry out four bombings in the capital emphatically does not mean that they are “winning” the War on Terror, or that the authorities in Britain, the United States and elsewhere are “losing”. To think that means one accepts that the mere act of detonating a bomb is some kind of triumph for the extremists. It is either to ignore what the terrorists wish, in their warped way, to achieve or to accept that we might quietly acquiesce to these demands in order to prevent the carnage and horror recurring. It is to concede nihilism as an end in itself or to anticipate a national nervous breakdown.

On what score could these bombers be portrayed as “winning”? A meaningful victory has to mean a lot more than being able to conduct a set of bombings somewhere in Europe or the United States once a year. It is terrible that around 75 people died on Thursday, but that does leave 60 million residents of the United Kingdom still in business. If al-Qaeda’s intention is to kill as many Britons as it can, then, to put it crudely, should it perform an outrage such as July 7, 2005, once a week from here on — while somehow evading capture throughout that dreadful enterprise — and assuming no net population increase, then it will be approximately AD18,000 before it succeeds.

It is said, alternatively. that the terrorists managed to inflict chaos in London and to disable the entire transportation network. But for how long? Eight hours for most sections and a few weeks for a number of stops on the Piccadilly Line. To put that in context, a swath of the Central Line was out of action for three months in 2003 after a derailment at Chancery Lane that inflicted no major injuries.

Ah, some will say, what about the political impact? What, indeed. Does anyone think that the public is about to rise and demand that Mr Blair is replaced as Prime Minister by George Galloway? Does anyone believe that the Government will meekly withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Iraq in the hope of currying failure with Bin Laden and his cronies? Do you or does anyone you know intend to convert to Islam to be on the safe side? Of course not. Al-Qaeda and all it stands for is an exercise in futility and failure. The only means by which the terrorists can “win” is if we lose our nerve.

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