Ankle biting ass mites

This little bit from Reuters is like hearing two of Neville Chamberlain's aides saying that Churchill’s rash actions following the invasion of Poland “…escalate the potential for Nazi violence against Europe and the United Kingdom.”

U.S. terrorism experts Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon have reached a stark conclusion about the war on terrorism: the United States is losing.
Despite an early victory over the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the two former Clinton administration officials say President George W. Bush's policies have created a new haven for terrorism in Iraq that escalates the potential for Islamic violence against Europe and the United States.
…
America's badly damaged image in the Muslim world….

When has it ever been good over the last 40 years? Only when we are seen as anti-Israel, that’s when. Hate the US? Ask the majority of Iranians under 30 what they think. Ask the young professionals trying to bring democracy to Lebanon and Iraq what they think.

And what NEW and EXCITING do you want to do?

… bold U.S. initiatives to address the grim social realities that feed Islamic radicalism,…

What grim social realities? That they believe in a death cult branch of their religion? Don’t give me the poverty crap either. All 19 hijackers at 9/11 and the Brit bombers of 7/7 came from middle to upper-middle class educated backgrounds.

"It's been fairly disastrous," said Benjamin, who worked as a director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999.

Very nice. That is rich. What were you doing to combat terrorism in the ‘90s that was SOOOO successful. Still working on that FBI interviews of Khobar Towers….

“…We have done a lot to fuel the fires, and we have done a lot to encourage people to hate us," he added in an interview.

He really has no concept of war as it is in the real world. Who taught this man history?

Benjamin and Simon, a former State Department official who was also at the NSC, are co-authors of a new book titled: "The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right" (Times Books).

Following on from their 2002 book, "The Age of Sacred Terror" (Random House), Benjamin and Simon list what they call U.S. missteps since the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.

I would be more interested if they focused on what they didn’t do when they were in a position to pre-empt 9/11.

"Everyone says there's a war of ideas out there, and I agree. The sad fact is that we're on the wrong side," said Benjamin, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

So Benji, in your estimation, who is on the right side? What bold steps with proven track records do you recommend for success?

… bolstering public diplomacy with trade pacts aimed at expanding middle-class influence in countries such as Pakistan.

These two are too much. Do we need to review the social breakdown of AQ again?

Washington also needs to do more to ease regional tensions that feed Muslim grievances across the globe, from Thailand and the Philippines to Chechnya and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Does he have a clear-eyed understanding of these Muslim death cults? You cannot reason, negotiate, or dialog with them. Peace to them is your death and/or surrender. They must be killed, their reputations shamed, and their supporting infrastructure destroyed.

These two have no new ideas, just a desire to return to the head-in-the-sand policies that did not work in the Cold War, and have not worked towards Islamic terrorism in the last 30 years. The luxury of feel-goodism is past. These guys are just hacks. Want to know how to tell? They only point out problems post-9/11 when their benefactors were out of power – like Islamic terrorism was beamed down by Scotty in the fall of 2001.

Yawn.