We are doing a lot to stop terrorists, actually

There is a familiar pattern, almost a ritual, that follows each terrorist outrage. Flowers are laid around the police cordon. World leaders promise to “stand with” the afflicted country. Its flag is projected on to landmarks, and the Eiffel Tower is dimmed. Sympathetic hashtags spread on social media.

And then – this has become every bit as much a part of the ritual – there is a backlash.

Columnists ask when we’re going to start fighting back. When are we finally going to “do something”?

They rarely specify what this “something” is, preferring to leave an unspoken implication that we are refusing to get tough with the terrorists.

But are we? In Barcelona, as at the London Bridge abomination, the police response was immediate and impressive. And for every such attack, dozens are forestalled through good intelligence.

Several Western extremists who went to fight in Syria have been satisfyingly vaporised there, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant faces total defeat.

Meanwhile, there has been a cultural shift. Muslim leaders now condemn terrorist attacks uncomplicatedly, without tacking on criticisms of Western foreign policy.

This is a hard thing to write in the aftermath of the Barcelona horror, but the increasing use of vehicles as a weapon – Nice, Berlin, Stockholm, London, now this – is a sign of weakness. Monitored and infiltrated by the finest counterterrorism forces in the world, the jihadists are driven to seek softer and softer targets: tourist streets, concert halls, children.

Which brings me to something even harder. There is no way to protect every street, every shopping centre, every sports ground.

We’re all angry. But, please, direct your anger at the murderers, not at the governments trying to stop them.