Much of the present breast-beating over Islamic terrorism is politically motivated exaggeration. Yet even here, the U.S. government will not do much other than spy on its own citizens with ever greater intensity. To really make the U.S. safe from Middle East terrorism, Washington will have to dump Israel, play hardball with Saudi Arabia, and swear off the regime-change policy that has so disastrously driven its actions in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Even if by some political magic we are able to get rid of ISIS and its propaganda, we would still face domestically bred terrorism. And this, of course, is the nature of the vast majority of our mass violence and mayhem. The fault is in ourselves, be it with economic inequality, recurring racism, xenophobia, or just a pervasive culture of callousness ameliorated by nothing better than scattered volunteerism and a constant demand for charity. And behind it all are is what the New York Times now calls "the gun epidemic" -- an epidemic that weaponizes a society that seems incapable of dealing with its own failures.
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