For Washington, the holiday season marks a lull before the storm. On the surface, all seems serene as we celebrate this most American of our holidays with families and friends in the quiet of our homes. President Bush, the man who will decide if and when the United States goes to war against Iraq, is off at his Texas ranch in a week that marked the 21st birthday of his twin daughters.

Members of Congress, their acrimonious session mercifully concluded after bestowing their blessing for war on the president, have left to junket around the globe or repair to their home bases, not to return until after the start of the new year.

Potential candidates in a presidential race that will start all too soon are issuing policy papers, lining up fund-raisers and weighing decisions that will affect their lives and possibly the country’s course.

Federal bureaucrats, who started planning the new Department of Homeland Security before the measure finally passed, are working to turn the concept into reality, aware that protecting homeland security will remain something of a question mark in the months, if not years, it will take.

Meanwhile, permanent Washington residents, who can only watch our lawmakers without helping to pick them, can only wonder if a war with Iraq will threaten our security with a repetition of the terrorist attacks that so stunned this capital less than 15 months ago.

People here still are split on whether war is inevitable. But few of them, whether they support or oppose military action, have much doubt the United States can drive Saddam Hussein from his sanctuaries if it decides to do so.

Where there is concern, it is threefold. First is the wisdom of the rich and powerful United States launching what many parts of the world will see as a unilateral, pre-emptive strike against a far poorer Muslim country. As such, it could create long-term problems.

Second is whether the aftermath of any war with Iraq will require thousands of peacekeepers and consume billions of dollars, thus eating up funds that otherwise could be used to pay for the educational, health and security needs of Americans at home.

Third, and perhaps most serious, is whether, in the time it takes to undermine and overthrow the Iraqi leader, he and his putative allies in the shadowy world of terrorism will respond in some devastating way against the United States and its allies, especially Israel.

If there is one clear lesson of Sept. 11, it is that none of us can be totally certain of being secure, wherever we are (though readers in the rest of the country may have reason to feel safer than writers in Washington).

One way that has been brought home is in the fact that, after all of the effort that has been made in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Osama bin Laden remains at large and his network, while wounded, remains in business.

If nothing else, that illustrates the fact that it has proved easier for Bush and his administration to deliver their oft-stated vows to fight and defeat terrorism and its leaders than to achieve those results.

That was wholly predictable, as was the likelihood there would be additional threats and additional terrorist acts. It is hard to know to what degree the lack of any attacks since Sept. 11 within the United States is the result of U.S. vigilance, including repeated governmental warnings, or good fortune.

The last 15 months have sapped our comfort and, to some degree, the confidence that Americans always have had but that was reinvigorated with our nation’s success in winning the Cold War.

Victory in this shadowy, not-so-cold war of the 21st century almost certainly will prove more elusive than the triumph over the old Soviet Union, explaining why we worry about the impending storm while we celebrate the present lull.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.