Change and Hope?

I wondered if the Christmas Day bombing attempt might really cause the president to believe--deep down--that we are at war and that it is his responsibility to lead us. Although President Obama has made many correct decision involving the continuation of Bush policies in many areas, he has seemed to go through the motions while he pursued what he really felt was important--nationalized health care, climate change, and federalizing education.

The dreadfully long process of deciding on the Afghanistan surge, which was intended to carry out the strategy he ordered back in the spring, seemed like a sign of this distance from our war.

I'm not the only one to be struck by this hope for change:

Thankfully, it seems finally to have dawned on President Obama that al Qaeda is an indefatigable enemy of the United States, and will seize any and every opportunity to kill Americans.

I hope for this change to be real. Because if our president doesn't really believe we are at war, who will lead us when the going gets rough again?

UPDATE: Steyn doesn't think the president has fully made the transition to war president. But as his article indicates, we knew what we were getting when we elected Obama. Leftists assumed Obama was fibbing when he talked tough on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Many voters liked the idea that they could vote for an African American for president. As I've said before, I am indeed proud that America demonstrated that we will elect a Black man. What other country can say that of a minority? Yet thus far, I remain disappointed that Barack Obama was that Black man. President Obama was mostly voted into office by an electorate tired of President Bush, and tired of the war Bush led us in for seven years. The Left may have opposed the war--even the "good" war--but even more Americans were simply tired of war and thought they has a way out by electing President Obama whose biography could appeal to the world to end the fighting.

So an electorate tired of war in 2008 elected a man who wanted to ignore the war and focus on domestic policies. Our president hoped an outreach would convince our jihadi enemies that they, too, should be tired of war. And Americans hoped for that, too.

But our enemy is not tired. And they won't get tired. Not on their own. They only get tired when they are crushed and beaten into the ground. That's how we beat jihadis in Iraq. That's how we'll beat them in Afghanistan. And that's the only way we'll beat them in the wider Islamic world--with the help of Moslem rulers and people who finally get tired of the death, destruction, and tainted reputation that the jihadis give all Moslems. Our president needs to know we are at war. And the American people have to again know that, too. Has the Christmas Day bombing attempt done both of those things?

Our president may still believe in his unique ability to reach out to the Islamic world. I actually hope he has that ability. Because now that we know that our enemy will not stop trying to kill us in our homes and planes, and now that the president seems to increasingly realize we are at war, President Obama will need that ability to reach out to the Islamic world to explain to them why we need to hunt and kill the jihadis. And he'll need to explain to the Moslem world that they need to join us in destroying the jihadis in their midst.