Fareed Zakaria “But, first, here’s my take. As we debate whether the two parties can ever come together and get things done, here is something President Obama could do, probably by himself, that would be a signal accomplishment of his presidency: End the war on terror.
At that point, he said, “our efforts should no longer be considered an armed conflict.” You might not realize it, but we’re still living in a state of war. This is the longest period that the United States has lived in such a situation, longer than the Civil War, World War I, World War II.
It grants the president and the federal government extraordinary authorities effectively suspends civil liberties for anyone the government deems an enemy and it also keeps us at a permanent war footing in all kinds of ways. Ending this situation should be something that would appeal to both left and right.
If you want to know why we’re in such a deep budgetary hole, keep in mind that we have spent about $2 trillion on foreign wars in the last decade. In addition, we have had the largest expansion of the federal government since World War II.
Dana Priest and William Arkin have documented that the U.S. government has built 33 new building complexes for the intelligence bureaucracies alone occupying 17 million square feet, the equivalent of 22 U.S. capitols or three Pentagons. The Department of Homeland Security itself employs almost one-quarter of a million people.
Of course there are real threats out there, including from new branches of al-Qaeda and other such groups. 
But we have done this before, and we can do it again in the future under more normal, legal circumstances. It will mean that the administration will have to be more careful and perhaps have more congressional involvement for certain actions, like drone strikes.
It might mean it will have to charge some of the people in Guantanamo and try them in military or civilian courts. But is all this bad? So have we reached the point where we might consider shifting from emergency wartime powers?
Well, a new report is out this week, a new Global Terrorism Index. It goes from 2002 to 2011. It shows that terrorism went up from ’02 to ’07, largely because of the conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, but has been declining ever since.
