Terra!

One of the big stories of the last day or so has been the new National Intelligence Estimate of the threat of terrorism. Depending on who you listen to, Osama bin Laden is about to fly a B-52 full of nuclear bombs to the U.S. or the intelligence agencies are crying wolf yet again .....

I conclude a couple of things, and I didn't need an NIE report to reach those conclusions:

1) the U.S. is vulnerable and likely to experience another terrorist attack. As hated as we are throughout the world and as provocative as we've been to Islamic fundamentalists, it only makes sense that the movement is energized around the world to strike the U.S. And no amount of "domestic security" is going to ever be able to stop all attacks.

2) Whether it's "al Qaeda" doing the attacking ... you know, the one in Pakistan, ... or a local believer who's hooked up to the movement via the internet (or his tinfoil hat for that matter) is less of a concern. As with the beginning of all this nonsense, the causes of this wave of terrorism are political and cultural, not military. The solutions will also be in longer term policies that address the political and cultural underpinnings of the problem.

3) No matter who the threat is, the short term solution are more based in intelligence, law-enforcement and nibble response. The solutions are NOT in using a hammer to try and kill a cruising fly. Our military, and Bush's use of it, are more of a cause of terrorism than a solution. Until we change course in the use of the military, the status quo of a continuing threat from those using the only weapons available to them remains.

4) The threat of a terrorist attack using a so-called "weapon of mass destruction" (I hate that term, what's mass destruction anyway?) is remote. To use large scale biological weapons or nuclear weapons requires expert technology, careful handling, is difficult to distribute and access that is simply beyond most people.

One other point. There's that little matter of Israel and Palestine. Of course this is all a part of that political/cultural thing I alluded to earlier. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is like a festering wound. It never kills you, but it continually harbors infection that never let's the world quite feel good. The conflict with Israel has spawned terrorism since before I was born, and will continue to fuel violent dissendent movements. This festering sore needs resolution for the GWOT to ever truly be over.

Because of my conclusions, I pretty much have tuned out much of the discussion of this recent NIE report. Frankly you're much more likely to die because you forgot to put on your seat beat when you drove to work. And "terrorism" is simply another word for a nutbar criminal, and they've always been with us (Timothy McVeigh anyone? Or how about the Virginia Tech nutbar?) and always will.

Of course it's useful as yet another repudiation of Bush and his policies. But until we have leadership that is able to apply greater than a retarded level of thinking to the problem, nothing will really change in this Great War On Terror.