While President Obama and his adoring media did a victory lap on the one year anniversary of Osama bin Laden's assassination, Fareed Zakaria had a completely different take about how the War on Terror is going.
On CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday, the host said, "We don't look like people who have won a war. We look like scared, fearful losers" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
FAREED ZAKARIA: Whatever you thought of President Obama's speech on Afghanistan this week, it is now increasingly clear that the United States is winding down its massive military commitments to the two wars of the last decade.
We are out of Iraq and we will soon be largely out of Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is dead, and al Qaeda is a shadow of its former self. Threats remain but these are being handled using special forces and intelligence. So, finally, after a decade, we seem to be right-sizing the threat from terrorist groups.
Or are we?
While we will leave the battlefields of the greater Middle East, we are firmly committed to the war on terror at home. What do I mean by that? Well, look at the expansion of federal bureaucracies to tackle this war.
The rise of this national security state has entailed a vast expansion in the government's powers that now touch every aspect of American life, even when seemingly unrelated to terrorism. Some 30,000 people, for example, are now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications within the United States.
In the past, the U.S. government has built up for wars, assumed emergency authority and sometimes abused that power, yet always demobilized after the war. But this is, of course, a war without end.
So we continue to stand in absurd airport lines. We continue to turn down the visa applications of hundreds of thousands of tourists, businessmen, artists and performers who simply want to visit America and spend money here, and become ambassadors of good will for this country. We continue to treat even those visitors who arrive with visas as hostile aliens - checking, searching and deporting people at will. We continue to place new procedures and rules to monitor everything that comes in and out of the country, making doing business in America less attractive and more burdensome than in most Western countries.
We don't look like people who have won a war. We look like scared, fearful losers.
Clearly, there's a lot to take issue with here.
First off, with regard to terrorism, what war have we "won"?
Has al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, or Hezbollah signed an unconditional surrender laying down all of their weapons promising to never attack innocent civilians again?
I hadn't heard about that. Have you?
Osama bin Laden is dead. Hip, hip hooray. But the War on Terror is far from victorious.
If America at this point were to drop its guard and stop behaving like terrorists are trying to repeat another 9/11 type attack on us, it will surely happen.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, America foolishly thought international conflict was over and peace would be a permanent condition on this planet forever.
That was a mistake, and thousands of innocent civilians perished one gorgeous Tuesday ten Septembers ago leading to at least three wars.
The one in Iraq has wound down, and the Afghanistan incursion is as well although with what appears to be far less success.
But despite the death of Osama bin Laden, the global War on Terror continues.
The moment we errantly take a posture that it has ended will certainly cost more American lives.
