Obama and the war on terror

Is Bush's global war over, or have the tactics merely changed?

"The war on terror is over," said Roger Cohen in The New York Times. President Obama has abandoned George W. Bush's "with-us-or-against-us global struggle" in which the freedom-loving West squared off against Islamofascism and other "forces of darkness." Obama's rapprochement with a Muslim world "long cast into the 'against-us' camp" will make it easier to make progress on Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iran.

Obama's feel-good policies, said John Yoo in The Wall Street Journal, sure please his base. But closing Guantánamo Bay and ending the CIA's special authority to interrogate terrorists "will also seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks."

Terrorists might think they can breathe easy, said Investor's Business Daily in an editorial. "But before Osama gets too comfortable in his cave, he should ponder" what Obama has said about his resolve to crush al Qaida, and how Predator drone strikes in Pakistan on Obama's watch killed several terrorists. Tactics may change, but the goal is the same.