History tells us that in the 11th century King Cnut – Anglicized in modern English to Canute – ruled Denmark. It’s said that a retinue of flatterers surrounded him who claimed the King capable of almost any feat. To prove them wrong, he had his royal chair placed by the edge of the sea where he ordered the waves not to break upon his land or wet his royal feet. When the sea ignored both orders, it showed his sycophants proof that kings have limited powers over the physical universe.

Unlike Canute, Obama doesn’t need a retinue of flatterers. He does a good job of the “mirror, mirror on the wall …” routine in solo performance as evidenced by the volume of personal pronouns in his National Defense University speech last week. Also unlike Canute, who modestly acknowledged the limits of his power, Obama is quite the opposite. By declaring in his speech that the 12-year war the US has waged against the clients of terrorism is over, then by Jove, it’s over. Somebody should let the terrorists know, however. One of them beheaded a British soldier on a London street the day before King Canute-Obama’s declaration. Doggone those waves!

Obama’s speech was unremarkable in content and puzzling in purpose. With his administration awash in three simultaneous scandals maybe the speech was his way of changing the subject.

I’ve read its grandiloquence and many commentaries on it as well. As in all spoken or written communications, I looked for the fulcrum – the “center of gravity” – around which all of the words rotate. It seems the fulcrum of Obama’s speech, which needed 6,500 words to support it, is this statement:

Today, the core of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on a path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us. They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston. They have not carried out a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11. Instead, what we’ve seen is the emergence of various al-Qaeda affiliates. From Yemen to Iraq, from Somalia to North Africa, the threat today is more diffuse …

The assertion that al-Qaeda is “on the path to defeat” is delusional. The evidence, like Canute’s wet feet, shows the opposite. The murder of our Libyan Ambassador, Chris Stevens, and his security detail were casualties of this kind of wrong-headed thinking.

Following Obama’s speech, Senator McCain held a press conference in which he challenged the “path to defeat” assertion, to wit:

I believe we are still in a long, drawn-out conflict with al-Qaeda. To somehow argue that al-Qaeda is, quote, ‘on the run’ comes from a degree of unreality that, to me, is really incredible. Al-Qaeda … is … expanding all over the Middle East, from Mali to Yemen and all places in between. And to somehow think that we can bring the authorization of the use of military force to a complete closure contradicts the reality of the facts on the ground. Al-Qaeda will be with us for a long time.

It’s laughable to believe that “remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us.” Does Obama believe their suicide ideology has changed? I doubt that any “worry about their own safety” when they volunteer to blow up their underwear or shoes or hang around London after a beheading, knowing they will be shot (as two were.)

The Benghazi attackers were al-Qaeda affiliates, contrary to Obama’s claim that they weren’t, and while the Boston bombing wasn’t genuine home-grown al-Qaeda, it was a Muslim fanatical jihad group that showed Tamerlan how to make the bomb he used. Does their brand really matter? The Boston victims are just as dead or mutilated regardless of the terror brand on the bomb.

Finally, “They have not carried out a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11” shows how much time Obama has been spending on the golf course. Ten years after 9/11 Obama ordered Anwar al-Awlaki – a regional commander of al-Qaeda – to be vaporized in Yemen in September 2011. Two years earlier al-Awlaki masterminded the 2009 Ft. Hood attack that killed 13 and wounded 30. Major Nadal Hasan was the shooter but al-Awlaki called the signals. And before al-Awlaki’s atoms comingled with the eternal ether, he invited Umar Abdulmutallab to his Yemeni home to advise the youngster how to ignite his Fruit of the Looms en route to Detroit. Thankfully that 2009 attack failed. The next year in 2010, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani graduate of Terror U., parked a car bomb in Times Square which failed to explode. Do any of these constitute an attack on our “homeland since 9/11” contradicting Obama’s confident assurance in his speech? The fact that we haven’t seen any more planes fly into buildings is not evidence that homeland attacks are over. One of the many attempts will slip through our security – like the Boston bombing.

As I read Obama’s careful parsing of who is and who isn’t al-Qaeda, I recalled a scene in one of the Pink Panther films. Spying a snoozing pooch at a man’s feet, the bumbling Inspector Clouseau asks “Does your dog bite?” Assured by the man that his dog didn’t bite, Clouseau bent over to pet the animal and it bit him. “I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite!” screamed the Inspector. “That’s not my dog,” the man answered without looking up.

If Obama believes the only participants in “the war on terror” are card-carrying al-Qaeda wearing tee-shirts with A-Q logos, we’re in trouble.

Obama, who has authorized 600% more drone strikes than the hated George Bush, showed new “no more war” restraint in saying,

… we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people … there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.

The first phrase referring to a “continuing an imminent threat” in the speech is significant. Before the speech, Obama staffers briefed reporters that the threat threshold for drones had been raised from “significant threat,” which the new CIA chief, John Brennan, had laid down in 2012 when he was the White House counterterrorism adviser to Obama. Now it must be a “continuing and imminent threat.”

“Larry, does that look like a ‘significant threat’ or a ‘continuing and imminent threat’ to you?”

“Why, Moe, that’s a ‘significant threat’ if I’ve ever seen one. What do you think, Curly?”

As if this silly, hair-splitting distinction wasn’t foolish enough, Obama added, “there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.” Can you imagine how the US military would have fared with that standard in any of the conflicts it has fought? Sherman didn’t mean “War is hell” metaphorically. He meant the civilian population is a fair target in order to get the other side to stop fighting. Ask the Japanese.

With about 80% of the speech behind him, Obama began his coda:

The (Authorization to Use Military Force) (AUMF) is now nearly twelve years old. The Afghan War is coming to an end. Core al-Qaeda is a shell of its former self. Groups like al-Qaeda’s affiliate in the Arabian Peninsula must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that label themselves al-Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States. Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states. So I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further. Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.

“This war, like all wars, must end” sounds nice. But wars don’t end when one side declares them over. They end when one side wins and the other side surrenders and thereby loses. That’s the way it’s always worked. I haven’t a clue what Obama’s allusions to “history advises” or “democracy demands” mean but I do know history a lot better than Obama. When there isn’t an undisputed winner, the conflict continues in a thousand disguises.

Continual warfare is, well, continual. Michael Adebolajo, the Nigerian Muslim who beheaded Lee Rigby in London last week and then waved his bloodied hands and showed his blood-stained shirt to nearby citizens who were video-recording him – citizens who had allowed him to live in their country – showed his gratitude by shouting on video “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”

Obama may not have the stomach for continual war, but Islamic supremacists do. They believe they are divinely directed to conduct violent jihad against non-Muslims – that’s you and me – until we and the world submit to sharia and thereby a perfect society. Last week Obama repeated his standard mantra that most followers of Islam do not believe in practicing violence. Yet strangely, the Islamic community has yet to take a stand against it.

Before concluding his speech, Obama trotted out for the umpteenth time the tired old bromide about closing GTMO (Gitmo) – home to 166 of the world’s nastiest characters.

GTMO has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law. Our allies won’t cooperate with us if they think a terrorist will end up at GTMO. During a time of budget cuts, we spend $150 million each year to imprison 166 people – almost $1 million per prisoner. And the Department of Defense estimates that we must spend another $200 million to keep GTMO open at a time when we are cutting investments in education and research here at home.

There is no evidence that Gitmo is the scourge of the world. It isn’t a symbol that we flout the rule of law and people would begin to like us if only we’d close it. The fact is that Congress will not permit this detention facility – which treats its inmates better than they are treated at home – to be closed because two out of three Americans, aka voters, want it open. At least we know where the bad guys are … and will remain … unless they learn to swim the Florida Straits.

A million dollars per inmate involves some very creative accounting. Coming from a guy who ran up a $16 trillion debt against future American generations, his economic argument that we must choose between Gitmo or investment in education and research has no moral standing.

As President, I have tried to close GTMO. I transferred 67 detainees to other countries before Congress imposed restrictions to effectively prevent us from either transferring detainees to other countries, or imprisoning them in the United States. These restrictions make no sense … there is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should never have been opened.

Congress slapped a lid on Obama’s releases of detainees to Yemen and other countries who’d take them when they began showing up on battlefields again. No less than the New York Times, hardly a shill for conservative causes, reported at the foregoing link that one in seven former Gitmo detainees return to the battlefield. Politics had nothing to do with it. Releasing our enemies to kill more of our soldiers had everything to do with it. As for “a facility that should never have been opened,” Gitmo has been a US military post for over a century and most posts have a brig.

I know the politics are hard. But history will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism, and those of us who fail to end it. Imagine a future – ten years from now, or twenty years from now – when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not a part of our country. Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are? Is that something that our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children?

The reason that the inmates at Gitmo have not been charged with a crime is that they are not criminals. They are prisoners of war. They have no rights under the US Constitution because they aren’t citizens of this country. No trial by jury, no civilian courts, no ACLU lawyers or rules of evidence, no bleeding heart pleas for their misunderstood terrorist childhoods. They were caught shooting at our soldiers. PERIOD!

As for “not a part of our country,” Gitmo is a part of a 1903 lease arising out of the Spanish American War. The US has absolute and unconditional control under that lease although the land belongs to Cuba, which belonged to the Spanish, whom we whupped! So while the Gitmo base isn’t on sovereign US soil, it wouldn’t be wise for Cuba to try to take it back. Fidel might want to talk to the Argentinians about the Falkland Islands first.

As for the Founders and future generations, I think both groups would be more shocked about our profligate government, its use of the IRS to target citizens, the criminalizing of news reporters by illegal violations of their First Amendment rights, ignoring our Libyan Ambassador’s cries for help, and high government officials in the DOJ, IRS, and State Department who have perjured themselves before investigative committees of the people’s Congress. Gitmo pales against these travesties.

Obama’s unilateral declaration that war against the forces of terror is over conveniently overlooked the fact that Iraq is about to collapse into civil war. The Middle East – Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Afghanistan – have governments held together by chewing gum. None, including Iran, has a functioning economy that can employ its working-age male population to do something other than fight and engage in terrorism.

Militia groups – both armed and not – are forming throughout the Middle East and becoming de facto governments. A recent article noted that the Prime Minister of Libya “has to cross checkpoints manned by five different militias on his way home from office."  Unless stable governments, even those not to our liking, are formed soon, the result will be similar to Palestinian society – a impoverished generation of uneducated young men who have known no life but war, who possess no marketable skill except that of an irregular fighter, who have no home and thus nothing to lose or to build a future on.

The Middle East is becoming a large "factory” for the production of terrorists – stamped out like Fords on an assembly line. And with the fall of governments, the ability to control them diminishes. They are homeless, hungry, and angry. Their problems can’t be solved by US foreign aid as Obama proposes in his speech. There isn’t enough money in the world let alone in the US to do that. What is needed is something we can’t provide – governments that reflect their multi-ethnic cultures, governments that often rule with an uncomfortably harsh stick. We better accept the fact that most of the world cannot remain stable with the degree of freedom Americans enjoy. To think otherwise is Little Goody Two-Shoes thinking … at home in nursery stories but not the real world.

The two greatest threats to our national security are a military designed for conventional war but unprepared to fight the only kind of war that can be waged against a superpower like us – i.e. an army of independent irregular units armed with unsophisticated weapons, possessing no central command structure, reliant on small scale terror attacks, and trained to have a fanatical willingness to die when their own deaths can be multiplied in their dastardly deeds.

The second threat to our national security is that we enter a new era of war with a president who believes that the war is over.