On Their Terms

I was glad I caught the Rachel Maddow show tonight:

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It's even clearer now how Osama bin Laden provoked and baited us. Well, I thought it was easy to see in 2004, but apparently most of the country thought it was a good idea to reelect Bush. But I digress. We're fighting these wars on al Qaeda's terms running off to whatever impoverished and unstable country they're hiding out in.

The interview with Evan Kohlmann (about 7:40 into the above video) was the really insightful part. Anybody (me included) can point out what's wrong with our homeland security tactics, but Kohlmann points out what we could be doing differently in the Muslim world. For example, we could do proper intelligence work and continuously draw attention to the fact that more Muslim civilians die at the hands of al Qaeda than Americans do.

By the way, if you're keeping score on how many Muslim countries we're entangled in, don't count out Iraq just yet. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has plans to double in size. What was it that bin Laden said about "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy"?