America Overreacted to 9/11
“When confronting threats real or imagined, Americans tend to go big, very big.” A former Middle East CIA specialist says the political response to terrorism is often too cumbersome.
“Predictably, but unwisely, Democrats and Republicans demanded ludicrous amounts of funding for security and intelligence institutions whose functions they barely understood, and to counter a threat that had no resemblance to any the United States had confronted before. Armoring aircraft doors, tightening up airport security, and turning off the visa mill to Muslim men of an impressionable age was sufficient to discombobulate Al Qaeda’s penchant for aerial terrorism. … But none of these things required that much money or personnel.”
