Does Bush Think We're At War?

His odd wavering on Israel's actions in Lebanon makes Andy McCarthy wonder:

The Bush administration’s reluctance to identify the enemy in the “war on terror” — to deal with the Islamic in Islamic militancy — has been maddening. Up until now, though, it’s always been refreshing that the administration got the war part right.

For the president, the war on terror really has been a war. Not mere rhetoric, like a “war” on poverty or drugs. Better still, not some less-demanding struggle from which Americans were free to opt out. The war has summoned us to confront a capable, transnational enemy. One without scruples and committed to killing us.

With 9/11’s wake-up call, the administration became the first in a quarter century to assess what this enemy had actually done and, significantly, to listen to what this enemy was actually saying. This president was the first to conclude that an American government cannot responsibly default from a war that the other side has declared and is actively fighting.

That seems like a long time ago. Now, strength consists of running diplomatic interference, lest we lose the coveted mantle of “honest broker” — which, in the vaunted “international community,” means maintaining a veneer of assiduous neutrality even when staunch, civilized allies square off with America-hating savages.

This is like holding in 1942 that the British fighting the Nazis in Africa was completely unrelated to our fighting the Japanese in the Pacific.

Hezbollah long ago declared war on us. Iran and Syria have been killing Americans in Iraq.

How exactly this is different than Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini independently fighting us and our allies in WWII is beyond me.

But maybe that's because I have a history degree holding me back from appreciating all the "nuance" in the current situation.