Who's the real enemy?

In an Op-Ed last weekend, the New York Times' Thomas Friedman asked some curious questions, questions with answers that I think ought to be all-too-obvious. He wrote:

One thing that has always baffled me about the Bush team’s war effort in Iraq and against Al Qaeda is this: How could an administration that was so good at Swift-boating its political opponents at home be so inept at Swift-boating its geopolitical opponents abroad?

How could the Bush team Swift-boat John Kerry and Max Cleland — authentic Vietnam war heroes, whom the White House turned into surrendering pacifists in the war on terror — but never manage to Swift-boat Osama bin Laden, a genocidal monster, who today is still regarded in many quarters as the vanguard of anti-American “resistance.”

Is it really too much to comprehend that perhaps, in a White House in which "everything is driven by the political arm," the likes of John Kerry and Max Cleland were seen as greater threats than Osama bin Laden, or any other terrorist for that matter, and so smearing domestic opponents took (and still probably takes) priority over anything having to do with the "reality based" world?

I don't find anything puzzling here at all. This administration invented the "War on Terror," and induced every major news organization to go along with the phrase, making it seem almost like an element of objective reality, rather than the very effective demonstration of framing that it is. Terrorism may be real, but the "War on Terror" is a psychological tool of US politics.

I haven't seen any evidence to dissuade me from the belief that this administration is far more interested in appearing to face up to the threat, than in actually doing so.