There is an echo of imperial Rome in Bush's war capital

The wartime capital that is Washington today is a strange place. There are workmen busy restoring the Pentagon to the state it was in before September 11, and a few extra guards here and there. The city, with its well kept public places, its slow traffic along rather inert streets, and its stately morning streams of coffee-bearing commuters, shows no other outward sign of being at the centre of a world conflict. Yet, as if that was what the Dubya of his middle initial now stands for, the word "war" itself is rarely off the president's lips, or those of his ministers and advisers.
The struggle against terrorism, Bush said this week, is more akin to the second world war than to Vietnam. Vietnam, nevertheless, is worth remembering because it teaches the lesson that "politics ought to stay out of fighting the war". Criticising those in Congress who worry over raising the administration's debt ceiling, he said: "We ought not to be playing politics with the debt ceiling - particularly now we're at war."