I'd also suggest that the coiner of the phrase 'War on Terror' had one thing in mind; he may not have said it very well but he understood that if the other guy thinks he's at war and you don't think (or act like) you are, that other guy has a tremendous advantage over you...

Wilf's right on the money with his hedgehog analogy -- as he says, the hedgehog reaction is "Get Bin Laden." That's an exercise in futility if there ever was one. Hedgehogs further say "...we took our eyes off Afghanistan." I'd hope so -- Afghanistan never was and never will be the center of gravity of terror emanating from the ME. Nor is Islam, per se, the issue. That is not to say the PR effort and the public pronouncements have been effective or accurate but public pronouncements rarely reflect the totality of thought or even most of the subtleties of strategic effort.

I agree with Bruce Gregory on most of the first 'lesson.' I disagree on the second for the reasons cited above. I submit that most of the world has been trying to implement his third 'lesson' for eons with partial success. Agree with his fourth 'lesson' but do wonder how we are going to destroy or significantly reduce our current national bureaucracy to enable that to occur (noting that no suggestion on how to accomplish this is offered); and agree with his fifth 'lesson.' Thus, I think he's got two right; two in the 'almost too hard' box -- good ideas but difficualt to implement -- and was quite wrong on his reading of the Fox and the Hedgehog.

I also think he, like many, fails to consider all the other aspects of the strategy that are on-going; the wars are, by design, big attention grabbers. The other stuff is below a lot of radar horizons...