If, in responding to whatever the hell it was that actually happened on 9/11, we were correct in believing that radical Islam was the most significant threat to US National Security — our responses, which have (along with murdering millions of innocent civilians in other nations) delivered us directly to the doorstep of unconscionable poverty, infrastructural collapse, catastrophic miseducation, and apocalyptic corruption of our financial and health systems… and in which we multiply repeated the military mistakes of China and the former Soviet Union (particularly in Afghanistan) represent the most egregious acts of national myopia in US history.

Apparently neither our leaders nor our people are sufficiently educated to detect the difference between leadership and bald stupidity?

It actually looks from the inside like the greatest threat was either our own stupidity, or our own willingness to be lead by those whose fundamental organizing principles are little more than ravenous greed and murderous intent dressed up as patriotism. Radical Islam was, so far, largely the self-appointed straight guy in this comedy of suicides, omnicides, and terrorisms. We’ve done ourselves vastly more harm than they could hope to accomplish; indeed, we were doing that long before they joined the fracas, and it seems to be our intention to continue long after they have departed the stage.