If you’re looking for a true sign of how far we’ve come since 9/11, skip the new video from Osama bin Laden and focus on the police bust of terror plotters in Germany last week. The basic facts of the case – the nature of the plot, who was behind it and the fact that the good guys won – tells you what you need to know about how we’re doing.

My scorecard sees some good signs, but not nearly enough for us to win. And remember, there can be no ties in this war.

If that seems too pessimistic, consider that the issue is no longer Osama bin Laden. It is bin Ladenism, a dagger of nihilistic violence aimed at the heart of civilization. The monster himself remains an important symbol – perhaps more important to us than to them – but the evil movement he spawned has taken on a life of its own. Even without him, World War III would continue.

The soldiers in his movement don’t require direct leadership or even contact with al-Qaeda’s inner circle. As former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said of the “arc of extremism” that unites Muslim terrorists around the globe: “It doesn’t always need structures and command centers or even explicit communication. It knows what it thinks.”

This time the cancer popped up in Germany, where two of the three initial arrests in the plan to attack transit systems and a U.S. military base involved German natives who converted to Islam. One was named Fritz to his family and Abdullah to his fellow plotters. Similar homegrown cells are increasingly responsible for attacks and plots. Some, like in Madrid and London, were successful, others have been thwarted.

Our military in Afghanistan and Iraq is fighting heroically, and with increasing, though shaky, success. Our intelligence and law enforcement, best illustrated by the NYPD, have gotten smarter in thinking globally and locally, yet still don’t always communicate. Their counterparts in most of Europe and parts of Asia, slow to understand the threat, are now more fully engaged, as the German arrests and recent ones in Denmark and Great Britain prove.

Yet it’s all still too slow and too hesitant. From President Bush on down, we lack a sense of urgency. The enemy is changing faster than we are. We endlessly debate and contest something so fundamental as the Patriot Act. The liberal media calls warrantless wiretapping “domestic spying,” giving an important tool a bad name. Iraq has been mismanaged from the start. Mistakes, stupidity, political opportunism and legitimate divisions are crippling us.

The enemy acts, we react. Sooner or later, we will be too late. And if that is when they use a weapon of mass destruction, our losses will be unfathomable.

That fact is a given in law enforcement, but it has not yet seeped into our culture. We do port security on the cheap, counting on luck to save our civilization.

We dwell more on the cost of protection than on the cost of a calamity.

A recent segment of the PBS series “Nova” wondered why we have not improved construction and evacuation plans in most high-rise towers. It took five hours to evacuate the World Trade Center after the 1993 truck bomb that killed six, but the buildings collapsed within two hours of the 2001 attacks. Do the math.

Iraq is the main proxy for this larger war, both there and here, and the divisions it has unleashed will take center stage in Washington this week. As you watch the serious testimony and the political grandstanding, remember two things: We must win to survive. And each of us is responsible for helping.