Defeating Terrorism: An Oddly Simple First Step

Funny how neo-cons want to say that everything about the Sixties was meaningless, insignificant, silly, indulgent and un-American, except the Vietnam war.

The war in Iraq has pushed a lot of buttons with this crowd, but it all seems to be wired, to some degree, to Southeast Asia. About erasing that perceived defeat (their perception). About "getting it right."

I heard William Bennett on CNN, eulogizing Jean Kirkpatrick. He referred to her as the GOP's Thatcher and called her "our Iron Lady." What is it about these people that they can never talk of peace? (Even their women have to come across like Vince Lombardi.) They can never talk of US accountability in the Middle East. How year upon year of ill-conceived, poorly executed US policy, from both Democrats and Republicans, has created the staggering level of ill-will we are now treated to in the Muslim world. How this administration's war plan was merely the match that touched a pool of gasoline laid down by more that thirty years of bad decisions by our government.

There is an answer to this problem. There is a way to defeat terrorism while building new and better alliances in the Arab world. It will be an enormously complex and difficult diplomatic puzzle. But the first step might be oddly simple. Get rid of the CIA, which has outlived its usefulness and is an embarrassment to this great country, and rebuild and reform US intelligence capabilities to fight this new type of threat. I think our hopes must begin there.