(Oh, and as the RAND folks suggested, drop the "War of Terror" slogan. Because the only thing that's made it a war is the Yosemite Sams in this administration.)
Just this week, the Pentagon's favorite right wing think tank, the Rand Corporation, released a study showing that only 7% of the world's terrorist groups have been defeated militarily. The other 93% who were defeated either negotiated a political settlement or were arrested or killed by the police.
So.
1) As for domestic security turn the job over to the nation's cops, FBI, and America's Most Wanted. Yes I know they failed us on the lead up to 9/11. But interagency cooperation and intelligence-sharing has since been greatly improved. Improve it more. Make sure the channels of communication between local and federal law enforcement are unencumbered by turf nonsense and that local authorities have the information, tools and authority to act independently and quickly. The idea that somehow the Pentagon and NSA can protect folks in San Francisco's financial district is absurd in the extreme. No one knows their own community, and the people in it, than local cops.
3) But what if we are attacked by terrorists from one of those countries anyway? That's what all that expensive, high-tech stand-off weaponry we keep paying to develope is for. Any attack traced to terrorists from a particular country or countries, would be responded to with a punishing round of cruise missiles. But let's not waste these expensive dodads on terrorist mud huts. Instead target that nation's expensive infrastructure; bridges, dams, power grids, stuff that cost money and takes time to replace. (As you can tell, I'm not a turn-the-other-cheerker. I'm Sicilian.) I call it my "Just Don't Do That" defense policy. When a troublesome nation gets tired of replacing all that expensive infrastructure they'll have to decide if they want to keep replacing it or if maybe it wouldn't be cheaper to just get rid of of the terrorists. If not, and it happens again, we do it again. After all, it's no skin off our nose since we won't have our own troops in harm's way.
There. Now will someone in Washington just get this stuff done. I pay taxes so I don't have to get involved in this kind of nitty gritty, day to day operations of government. That's what we pay you guys and gals up there to do. So for Christ sake do it, will ya?
Oh, and do try to keep it simple -- stupid!
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