Perhaps in an effort to answer conservative critics who have charged that he doesn’t seem to understand that a global conflict is underway, President Obama said today:
We are at war, we are at war against al Qaeda.
Well, yes, but somehow I can’t imagine FDR saying:
We are at war, we are at war with the Wehrmacht.
Why not? Well, because we were at war not only with the armed forces of Germany. We also were at war with violent, supremacist ideologies (e.g. Nazi, Fascist, Japanese militarist) intent on the destruction and conquest of the democratic nations.
As we are again today (e.g. radical Islam in both its Shia and Sunni forms).
BTW, my column for NRO today looks at Paul Johnson’s brief history of the 1930s, a time that seems remarkably similar to the present.