WHAT IS OVER IS OBAMA’S CONNECTION TO REALITY

Barack Hussein Obama didn’t know security was so lax at our consulate in Benghazi, wasn’t aware the IRS was targeting his critics, wasn’t told Attorney General Eric Holder was combing through the telephone records of journalists, both he and his aides say.

If so, the president was remarkably detached from what was going on in his administration.  His speech at the National Defense University last week (5/23) indicates he’s also remarkably disconnected from what’s happening in the world.

"Every war has come to an end," he said.  The War on Terror must end, too, so he plans to ask Congress to "refine, and ultimately repeal" the authorization to use military force Congress passed three days after 9/11.

Wars end either when one side wins (e.g., World Wars I and II), or when the combatants negotiate a settlement (Korea, Vietnam).  But evidently Mr. Obama believes he can end this war simply by declaring it to be over.

Would that this were so.  Al Qaida attacked us on 9/11.  Since then, Islamists have made or attempted 54 more attacks, according to the Heritage Foundation’s tally.  They’ll keep trying to kill us until they’re defeated, or have a change of heart (and good luck on that).

"There have been no large-scale attacks on the United States, and our homeland is more secure," Mr. Obama said. 

Three Americans were killed and 256 injured in the Boston Marathon bombing last month.  At Ft. Hood in 2009, 13 were killed, 32 injured. 

Al Qaida is on its last legs, thanks to drone strikes against its senior leaders, the president and his aides claimed before the election.  This was tantamount to victory, they said.

This claim has been untenable since the attack on our consulate in Benghazi.  So in his NDU speech Mr. Obama scaled it down to: "today, the core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to defeat."

That could be true, depending on how one defines "core," but is irrelevant, because al Qaida has relocated.  Al Qaida controls more territory in Mali than it ever did in Afghanistan, the defense editor for the London Telegraph reported in January.  Libya is now al Qaida’s main base in Africa, a Libyan intelligence official said in early May. 

Al Qaida has become dominant among the rebels in Syria.  And a renascent al Qaida is just one of many Islamist groups conducting jihad against the United States.

"Our alliances are strong, and so is our standing in the world," the president said. 

Confidence in Mr. Obama and approval of his policies has fallen everywhere in the world, according to Pew’s annual Global Attitudes survey.  In Muslim countries, the percentage of those who approve of the U.S. fell from 25 to 15.  And in those Muslim countries, an arc of instability stretches now from Libya to Afghanistan.

The president revived his long dormant call to close Gitmo. Terrorists incarcerated there either would be sent to their home countries (and likely released to attack us again), or brought to prisons here, which is why most Americans oppose this.

Mr. Obama devoted much of his speech to defending drone strikes.  This seemed odd, because most Americans support them, and the little liberal minority that has qualms mostly have kept them to themselves.  More American citizens have been killed by his drone strikes than al Qaida leaders were waterboarded during the Bush administration, but most who expressed outrage about the latter have uttered scarcely a peep about the former.

In the future he’ll make drone attacks only on terrorists who are a "continuing and imminent threat to the American people," not on terrorists who are merely a "significant threat to U.S. interests," the president said.

How, pray tell, does one distinguish the one from the other? 

And he’ll authorize drone strikes only if there is a "near certainty" civilians won’t be injured.  We try hard to limit "collateral damage," but almost never is it possible to take out just the bad guys with a missile strike.

Drone strikes are legal only because of the authorization to use military force the president wants to "refine, and ultimately repeal."  So Mr. Obama plans to emasculate the only part of his national security policy which is working, then do away with it entirely. 

What we saw at NDU was a debate between Obama the dove of 2008, and Obama the hawk of 2012, said Commentary editor John Podhoretz.  It wasn’t clear who won, but America lost, because Hamlet makes a lousy commander in chief, said former Marine and assistant secretary of defense Bing West.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.