Seven-plus years ago, I argued in a cover story that the open-ended "war on terror" was damaging American interests and American values more than the (still-real) threat of terrorist attack had or ever could.

This wasn't some big leap of insight or imagination on my part. I was mainly citing military strategists and historians who had demonstrated, over time, that the reaction provoked by terrorist attacks was always more damaging than the original assault itself. Extreme illustration: the nationalist-anarchist assassination of two people in Sarajevo in 1914 leading to the deaths of tens of millions in The Great War. (Hyper-vivid death-car recreation at left, via Smithsonian.) The damage done by an over-reactive response to terrorism seems almost a ho-hum point now, but it wasn't prevailing opinion at the time, and I will always be grateful to James Bennet, then just installed as our editor, for sticking with it as his first cover story

Thus I was glad when, earlier this year, President Obama announced that it was time to "define our effort not as a boundless 'global war on terror' - but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America."

But as with various other aspects of the Administration and of this era, we've learned that it's one thing to announce "change!" and something else to bring it about. The drone war goes on, the NSA programs go on, surveillance increases and detentions continue -- and the damage mounts up faster than we reckon. There's immediate damage to the objects of these programs, of course -- but broader and longer-lasting damage to American institutions, interests, and ideals. (As you've read from Conor Friedersdorf, Andrew Cohen, and other Atlantic writers over the years.)