“Mission Re-launched” is the cover story on this week’s Economist. The cover illustration shows President Obama — the peace-lover, the man who ran against war, the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing in particular — morphed into George W. Bush on an aircraft carrier, circa 2003.

“Close your eyes and listen to Wednesday’s speech with a Texas accent, and you might feel like you’re having a flashback,” wrote Carrie Budoff Brown in Politico, speaking for many, and noting that Obama “often sounded like he had a ghost writer: the predecessor he mocked.” This is the final outcome and irony of the post-9/11 era: Barack W. Bush, the nation’s most reluctant war-leader president ever, is belatedly and reluctantly reporting for duty, having left himself no other choice.