After the attacks in Mumbai last week, should the United States bomb suspected terrorist cells in India? Send the Marines to Kashmir where one of the suspected groups behind the attacks -- Lashkar-e-Taiba -- originates? Or initiate regime change in Pakistan, which has provided support for several terrorist outfits operating in South Asia?

These are, of course, absurd options.

And yet the Bush administration, in its "global war on terror" (GWOT), pursued just such...