1) Prevent further terrorist attacks on American soil or citizens. Bush and his team have so far been successful here, and they deserve credit. But of course it's the sort of achievement that can be shattered at any time. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says he's quite certain there will be more attacks. Every sundown without another attack is a win; every sunrise is an opportunity for another defeat. Score: Provisional U.S. victory.

2) Apprehension of parties responsible for the 9/11 attack. Al-Qaida is in disarray but has not been obliterated. Osama bin Laden remains a giant question mark; even the leadership of American special forces charged with hunting him down in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan remain divided in their assessment of his fate. Elevated by President Bush to mythic status as "the evil one," he remains an inspiration to our enemies until and unless we can capture or kill him, or confirm his death. Score: Mixed.

3) Elimination of state-supported havens for al-Qaida terrorists. Al-Qaida's Afghan hosts, the Taliban, have been routed from power, but their leader, Mullah Omar, remains at large. Afghanistan's fledgling U.S.-backed government has not been able to rein in warlords who control most regions of the country. Meanwhile President Bush's "axis of evil" nations -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- each pose threats of varying kinds, but their status as havens for "terrorism of global reach" remains impossible to evaluate until and unless that nebulous phrase receives a better definition. Score: Mixed.

4) Rebuilding Afghanistan to win international support for future anti-terrorist campaigns. Having muscled out the Taliban with a speedy victory, the United States must live up to its rhetoric of supporting freedom and democracy -- for the sake of our allies and the general public in the Muslim world, both of whom are watching closely. "Nation-building" turns out to be not just an ethical responsibility but a realpolitik necessity -- particularly as this week's barely foiled attempt to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai shows just how unstable the country remains. It has taken the Bush administration a long time to accept this, but there's been grudging progress -- including recent willingness to expand the role of international peacekeepers outside of the Afghan capital. More money is also unavoidable. Score: Mixed to positive.

5) Preventing the spread of Islamic radicalism and support for bin Laden. One of al-Qaida's goals is to kindle anti-American fervor throughout the Muslim world, and thwarting that aim must be high on any list of U.S. priorities. The defeat of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan have sparked no mass movements or leadership changes in Islamic countries that would harm American interests or provide more recruits for bin Laden and his allies. So far, so good. But the U.S. remains vulnerable -- both because our support for repressive Arab oligarchies makes our pro-democracy rhetoric sound hollow, and because our nearly unconditional support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's campaign against Palestinian terrorism is hardly winning over Muslim hearts and minds. Score: Mixed.

6) Protection of the U.S. economy as the backbone of our war effort. The terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and one of their goals was to disrupt our economic system. Let's set aside the political debates here -- was the Bush tax cut the right prescription for the recession? what should be done to restore trust in corporate leadership? and so on -- and just look at the bottom line. On the one hand, 9/11 itself didn't wreck the economy the way many feared it might. Markets dove and then recovered; consumers kept buying. On the other hand, the economy has been essentially stuck in the same rut it was in before the towers fell, and nothing Bush has done has sparked a recovery yet. Meanwhile, the disastrous collapse of faith in the fairness of American business continues to eat away at our global standing and our confidence. Score: Mixed to negative.

7) Preservation of the ideals of our open society in the face of terrorist threats. Terrorism, by its nature, aims to disrupt daily life and force the target society to make rash choices out of fear. (That's why it's called "terrorism.") So far, I'd say that the American system has -- despite the occasional autocratic lunge from the Justice Department and the Bush administration's pathological secrecy -- proven its resilience, as it always has in the past. Whatever excesses have been committed in the name of the terrorism war, we do not live in anything like a police state. This goal will be further tested, of course, if future attacks rattle our nerves. Score: Mixed to positive.

8) Keep dangerous weapons and material -- nuclear, chemical and biological -- out of the hands of terrorists, and restrict their funding. This is an essential goal, and also one that is almost impossible for civilians to evaluate -- or even to know whether the government can properly evaluate it. If Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld know how we're doing in this area, they aren't telling. Maybe Tony Blair will enlighten us, but until then, the scorecard has to be left blank.

9) Cut American dependence on Mideast oil to reduce our exposure to instability in the area and our dependence on despotic regimes there. This is the one goal on my list that won't be found scrawled on any White House blackboard. To the oilmen of the Bush team, plainly, it's anathema. That's too bad, because kicking our imported oil habit could give us extra room to maneuver in all sorts of useful ways: No more kowtowing to the Saudis and their support for extremists; reduced need to support undemocratic governments of oil-rich nations; and hey, it's good for the environment too. Score: Total defeat.

Most people will disagree with one or another of the judgments on this scorecard. My purpose in the exercise is simply to point out how negligent Bush and the rest of the U.S. leadership have been in failing to publicly conduct it themselves -- and that includes congressional leaders who should be screaming at Bush by now for some answers.

Why hasn't Bush done so? I think there's only one plausible explanation: As long as the war's goals are unstated, Bush remains free to redefine the war itself on the fly -- to grandfather in other, preexisting goals that have little or nothing to do with the real war on terror, but that can borrow support from it. Iraq is the biggest example, but there are surely more to come.

Andrew Sullivan has argued in these pages that, somehow, because Bush has been clear all along that he wants to take out Saddam, you can't say he has "grandfathered" Iraq into the war on terror -- as New York Times columnist Frank Rich has said. But of course you can. No one ever said Bush tried to hide his desire to attack Iraq; the "grandfathering" lies in the president's opportunistic attempt to retrofit the nation's anger over the World Trade Center attack onto the substantially different campaign against Saddam Hussein.

By not telling the American public exactly who we're fighting or what we're fighting for, in other words, Bush is able to try to dragoon some of the energy and resolve that 9/11 crystallized in service to his prewar wish list. As he shoehorns incongruous policies into the "war on terrorism" box -- "regime change" in Iraq, an oil-friendly energy policy, lopsided tax cuts -- the gambit becomes more and more difficult to hide.

There's nothing wrong with a president trying to promote his policies, to be sure, but the underhanded tactics Bush is employing won't wear well as this war wears on. Stoking a wartime mentality without explaining the war's scope -- without giving the public any sense of how we'll know when we've won -- is a recipe for disaster. (We've been there before -- in Vietnam, the longest war in American history, and one that our government labeled as a mere "police action.") Piggybacking on that wartime mentality for partisan political goals that actually hurt the war effort can only backfire once people catch on to the game.

Karl von Clausewitz famously defined war as "an extension of politics [in German, politik, or 'policy'] by other means." In a war as complex and unorthodox as the war with al-Qaida, one that leaves old concepts of battlefield engagement far behind, that definition, with its reminder to keep one's eye on ultimate goals, provides a valuable compass. Unfortunately, President Bush seems to be simply reading Clausewitz in a self-interestedly literal-minded way. For him, the war on terror -- the war that he has framed as a noble crusade for freedom -- has become just a crude extension of his political agenda, "by other means."

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