We also helped create non-state actors hostile to us by funding the mujahadeen fighting the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, which has been called Russia's Vietnam. In the interim, Iraq became an encore presentation of America's Vietnam while Iran looms as a rerun of Cambodia. Also, when arming them, we failed to foresee that today's mujahadeen, viewing the US through the same lens as Russia, would become tomorrow's jihadi.
Meanwhile, it's embarrassing how many progressive commentators don't understand that the argument "Our policies are creating more terrorists than the Sorcerer's Apprentice does brooms" makes absolutely no impression on the administration and the hard right. Fretting about making enemies is for liberal-left wusses.
Now that the blame has been divvied up, can we have our teddy bears and security blankets back? Sure, just suck that thumb a little longer while we define security, which we'll do by pointing out what it's not first.
Second, security is not taking credit for terrorists' failure to attack us in the last five years. The real reason might be that they just haven't moved all their chess pieces into position to pull off their next big checkmate.
Third, security does not consist of attacking countries before they have nuclear weapons. Non-nuclear states can't help but conclude that the only sure way to avoid an attack by the US is to acquire or develop nuclear weapons.
If we -- government and public alike -- believe risking the lives of a million of our own is acceptable, provided we can take out ten million of theirs, we might as well sign up for assisted suicide now. A defense doctrine that channels the likes of the late Herman Kahn is little more than living death.
What security is is talking the likes of Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad off the ledge and luring them back inside with enticements. Won't that just encourage other world leaders to rattle their sabers until they fly off the handle? Perhaps, but, once again we have only ourselves to blame.
Turns out it was an American president, Richard Nixon, who redefined the madman theory of national leadership. When Hanoi wouldn't budge at the 1969 Paris peace talks, he ordered B-52s loaded with thermonuclear bombs to circle the north polar cap in hopes that a cowed Soviet Union would nudge North Vietnam to cooperate with us.
Security is also accepting that invasion and occupation are not credible foreign policy at a time of, in John Robb's words, open-source warfare (drawing from a large pool of co-developers). Time to keep it simple, stupid. Get out, stay out, and stop backing dictatorships.
Just like progressives have trouble focusing on politics when a Democrat occupies the White House, chances are jihadis will lose their edge in the absence of infidels tramping around their homelands and holy cities.
In time, perhaps, we can stop worrying about death by fragmentation as well as an Apocalypse with the power to make the Revelations look like a children's book in comparison. Who knows? Maybe one day the results of a poll on the greatest threats to our well-being will find terrorism way down the list from Internet security.
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