The president says the war is over and that drone strikes can be limited to narrow areas and focused even more than they are now.
And the notion that we must address their grievances rather than insist that they restrict their response to ways that do not infringe on our rights or kill us is preposterous.
The president was so close to insight in saying that military force is not the only part of the Long War. I've droned on about helping the Moslem world reject the jihadi impulse. But the president missed it and went back to the "why do they hate us?" guilt that assumes we have done wrong and we must make it right, or who can blame the jihadis for their violent rages.
And when a Code Pink (I can only assume from the shrillness evident) heckler condemns President Obama (who mistakenly engages her and tolerates her interruption--and even salutes her!) for his speech contents as being insufficiently supine, I can only assume that we are in retreat.
Violence isn't the only way to fight the Long War. But it is a vital part of it. And it reminds us that we are at war, does it not? Violence may eventually recede. But it doesn't just happen. It happens because we fight and win. But the war is over, it seems. We shall retreat.
When we retreat, enemies will advance. One side's receding tide of war is always the other side's rising tide that lifts all jihadis. We'll learn that again before this president's term of office ends.
UPDATE: Yes, the protester was purportedly Code Pink's pinkest Medea Benjamin. Luckily, she is part of the president's base so when she figuratively yelled out, "You lie!" she got the gentle treatment rather than the frog march that a Tea Partier would have gotten.
But the cruelest cut was the president's invitation to Ms. Benjamin: "Let Me Finish, Ma'am."
Ma'am! That's gonna leave a mark.
UPDATE: Casualties mount in Iraq even though President Obama "responsibly ended" the war. Our president says the war in Afghanistan will end when we pull most (all?) of our troops from that geographic entity, so of course India wonders what they will do:
As NATO troops solve the logistical challenges of a draw-down from Afghanistan, there is a sense of déjà vu among foreign policymakers in New Delhi. When the Soviet troops left Afghanistan in 1989, and US attention turned elsewhere, Pakistan used the militant infrastructure of the war to support a popular militant uprising in Indian-administered Kashmir while the Afghan mujahideen finished off the communists in Kabul.
Because the funny thing is, when we leave--the war goes on.
So forgive me for not sharing the confidence that the war on terror has gone on long enough and can be summarily ended by presidential decree. It doesn't take two to make war. Indeed, for the side at war, it is pretty ideal if they are the only side at war.
For those concerned with civil liberties (as I've raised over the years), declaring the war over yet institutionalizing in a peacetime setting many of the wartime practices to detect and stop terrorists should be of deep concern. When we are at war, some strengthening of state power occurs but when the war is actually won, those increased state powers are expected to be repealed or reduced. Is TSA being reduced? Border controls lifted? The PATRIOT Act repealed?
But if in peacetime we keep those restrictions because in practice the war is not really over, don't we simply accept a permanent ratcheting up of the security state?
If we're going to have to live like we are at war, we should say we are at war. At least then we have the ability to end war practices when the threat is low enough to declare victory on the figurative corpse of our enemies.
Right now the only question is how bloody the reminder that we are at war will be.
UPDATE: Oh, and silly me, I thought I was defending the president and his ability to wage war in this post. Who knew McCain was just telegraphing the president's intent?
