People need a fairy tale. And Obama is willing to provide them one. As a leader, Obama is proving to be a master of crafting a phrase (or reading one crafted for him) but there is little substance to his promises. The new president may be fond of pointing at the old president whenever criticism arises, but in reality, he’s changed very little of his military policy since coming into office- only the phrasing.

The NYT observes:

They may be sending 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, much as Mr. Bush did to Iraq, but it is not a “surge.” They may still be holding people captured on the battlefield at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but they are no longer “enemy combatants.” They may be carrying the fight to Al Qaeda as their predecessors did, but they are no longer waging a “war on terror.”

So if not a war on terror, what then? “Overseas contingency operations.”

And terrorist attacks themselves? “Man-caused disasters.”