From The Boston Globe
By James Carroll

State of the Union, state of war: They have a nice ring. When George W. Bush goes before the Congress and the nation tomorrow night, he will present himself (again) as a war president. Personally and politically, the identity defines him. Instead of the callow leader he was in the beginning of his presidency, he will conduct himself as a man of sharp determination, with defiance born of the impression that his fight is to the death. He will justify all of his policies, including the illegal ones, by citing his responsibilities — and privileges — as wartime commander in chief. He will not have to remind the men and women in front of him that twice (just after 9/11 and just before Iraq), they voted to license his use of ”all necessary and appropriate force” — enabling acts by which most of them still stand. The United States became a nation at war with congressional collusion.

But did it? Here is the embarrassing question: Is America actually at war? We have a war president, war hawks, war planes, war correspondents, war cries, even war crimes — but do we have war? We have war dead, but the question remains. With young US soldiers being blown up almost daily, it can seem an absurd question, an offensive one. With thousands of Iraqis killed by American firepower, it can seem a heartless question, as if the dead care whether strict definitions of ”war” are fulfilled. There can be no question that Iraq is in a state of war, and that, whatever its elements of post-Saddam sectarian conflict, the warfare is being driven from the Pentagon.

But, regarding the Iraq conflict as it involves the United States, something essential is lacking that would make it a war — and that is an enemy.

The so-called ”insurgents,” who wreak such havoc, are not America’s enemy. They are not our rivals for territory. They are not our ideological antagonists. Abstracting from the present confrontation, they have no reason to wish us ill.

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