It may be a "rehash," and much of this may seem intuitively obvious as well, but it also points out how distracted and off course the US is in our recent "threat-centric" pursuits of AQ and associated organizations.

Nothing any of these groups have done or could do threatens the strategic core of American power. A mis-focused pursuit of such groups, however, that abuses critical alliances, or that shifts focus and resources away from more strategically important functions and places, is indirectly far more dangerous.

The very existence of AQ and the many nationalist insurgent populace groups they leverage for their very existence is best viewed as a metric of the decayed, obsolete nature of the intra and interstate governmental relations in a post Colonial, post Cold War Middle East. We need to refocus our energy on the healing and reforming of those relations, and not overly obsess on the very naturally occurring popular challenges that always emerge when such conditions exist.

This is why I personally push for strategy-driven focus over threat-driven, or even friend-driven approaches. Friends and foes come and go, but strategic interests have a far more enduring nature. Americans, having short attention spans for such things, and taking the strategic strength of our position as described by Mr. Friedman for granted, are easily distracted by minor annoyances. We are so distracted now.

For me this becomes a question of where should we posture SOF? What language skills and what relationships are the most important to develop and nurture over time? What missions will be most likely and most critical to prevent or resolve conflicts that threaten such interests?

Any conversation that begins with the letters "AQ" is likely almost completely irrelevant or immaterial to our near or future success as a nation. Small wars are indeed important, but only if they happen in "big" places. Not big in size, but in geo-strategic importance to our national well being.

We are well down the rabbit hole of chasing such irritants, with just our overfed backside exposed to the world. Backing out of such positions will not likely look very graceful, but our pride will recover in short order. I don't know how we disrupt the inertia of our current pursuits and focus, but for our sake and the sake of those who come behind us, we need to make the refocus soon.