RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON the peculiar state of the War On Terror. “Al-Qaeda, far from being hunkered down in caves, is holding conference calls. . . . The conference among ‘far-flung operatives’ was an amazing achievement for an organization already declared dead and buried. . . . It’s like Versailles in the days of Louis the XIV: the inmates cannot conceive that an external universe exists, one in which another sun shines more brightly than the Sun King. . . . While a person untutored in the ways of Washington might conclude that recent events show President Obama is in the last stages of losing the vestiges of American influence in the Middle East, passively watching the rearmament of Japan, haplessly presiding over the resurrection of the Cold War, and being driven back by al-Qaeda into a static defense of the homeland, this cannot possibly be true: the Beltway pundits have decreed otherwise. None of these bad things is yet fait accompli, but if any are to be avoided, the political establishment has to acquire a degree of intellectual honesty and vision which it has so far conspicuously lacked. They at least have to start calling things by their proper names.”