So terrorists are bad right?

Uh, why didn't they check a few years ago?

I'm not sure why this particular headline was picked. It makes it sound like we were doing in part what I have suggested has been lacking from our overall anti-terror strategy. Namely, what is so troubling about American or American-"ism" that it fosters the growth of international terrorist cells in other countries (or in the US itself). I have to wonder why this question has been fundamentally rejected as unimportant. It does not rule out the prospect of invading sovereign nations as our game of nations rulers are wont to do. It does not rule out the possibility of non-interventionism, as many Americans used to be wont to do. It just asks some formative questions about the particular enemy we are engaging before committing to a strategic game of maneuver. Or as we are apparently willing to do, fumble around with troops in hostile territory without a clear idea what will pacify the natives, and play read and react with the terrorist's mail by over-analyzing everything that shows up on Al-Jazeera.

Since the actual article basically says what everyone should have known: that the American strategy is unchanged and still inflexible. It's pretty boring. One weirdo factor out of our Iranian experience was that assassinations are no good for creating foreign policy regime changes. Apparently that leaves on the table: embargoes (which don't work one iota on tyrannical societies and require multilateral support to have any effect at all) or full-out invasions (which seems mostly to induce advanced societies to produce enriched uranium while the little guys can get flattened if we care enough to bomb them). That should not be our only two options and having them as the only "out" cards in the deck seems to suggest we've made some fundamental errors in reaching them.