President Bush likes to call himself a “wartime president,” but Fareed Zakaria, in a smart column, debunks the whole idea that the United States is “at war” and needs a wartime president:
“It is by now overwhelmingly clear that al-Qaida and its philosophy are not the worldwide leviathan that they were once portrayed to be. Both have been losing support over the last seven years. The terrorist organization’s ability to plan large-scale operations has crumbled, their funding streams are smaller and more closely tracked. Of course, small groups of people can still cause great havoc, but is this movement an ‘existential threat’ to the United States or the Western world? No, because it is fundamentally weak. Al-Qaida and its ilk comprise a few thousand jihadists, with no country as a base, almost no territory and limited funds. Most crucially, they lack an ideology that has mass appeal. They are fighting not just America but the vast majority of the Muslim world. In fact, they are fighting modernity itself.”
In short, we’re not at war, and we don’t need a “wartime president.”
