War

Judah Grunstein notes that there are an estimated 300 al Qaeda terrorists ensconced in Pakistan :

Now, those 300 people, given the latitude, could do quite a bit of damage. [But] one of the by-products of the lazy use of labels -- whereby all attacks in Iraq from 2004-2007 were the work of terrorists, and the Taliban and al-Qaida have been lumped together into the same category of threat -- is that we've conceptually inflated the size and strength of the group that was interested in attacking us.

We've now got upwards of 40,000 troops in Afghanistan, with the ostensible mission to eliminate the threat posed by 300 guys. In Pakistan. Think about that.

Not only that, but in the midst of the worst economic crisis in generations, at a time when the U.S. is driving itself further and further into debt, we're about to pour billions of additional dollars into Pakistan and Afghanistan to shore up both states.

It's worth remembering that 9/11 reportedly cost about $500,000 to pull off. Between the Department of Homeland Security, the two wars, significant increases in defense and intelligence spending, etc., the U.S. is well over the trillion dollar mark, and counting. And yet five motivated terrorists could still arm themselves, stroll into a shopping mall and murder scores of people.