Free at last for a global power play

PARIS George W. Bush's speech on Monday, on the half-year anniversary of the World Trade Towers and Pentagon attacks, provided a more coherent statement than we had yet had on the policy he is following.

The policy's objective and limits nonetheless remain unclear, which adds to the impression that Washington's new working assumption is the reverse of the Orwellian postulate that "war is peace." For the United States now, or at least for the Bush administration, peace is war.

The president again raised the stakes by insisting upon the danger of "terror on a catastrophic scale" if America's enemies are not defeated, whoever and wherever they are. He declared that the rout of Al Qaeda and Taliban forces means little without a new and "sustained campaign to deny sanctuary to terrorists" in the Philippines, Yemen, Georgia, Indonesia, Somalia and unspecified elsewheres.