Matt Yglesias's Best Post Ever

Please.

There's a difference between a lone nut and organizations that span countries, raise millions of dollars, purchase military equipment, conduct military training and exercises, conduct negotiations with sovereign states, and utilize propaganda to convert other to their cause.

So let me summarize: (a) not literally all terror attacks originate from planners operating out of, or with the assistance of folks in, safe havens/failed states/rogue states, and (b) one shouldn't knee-jerkingly apply an algorithmic rule such as 'if terrorists planned their thing in Country X we automatically bomb Country X' when constructing a defense policy.

Got it. Cuz we all totally thought otherwise till Matthew's post. Lessons learned!

The new war is not against radical Islam, it's against technology. Technology empowers everyone, including embittered losers. Two thousand years years ago one would have needed the resources of a medium-sized kingdom or an empire's army to kill three thousand people. Today, all it takes is eighteen partners and nineteen airplane tickets. We are coming up to a world where you will need a background check to study microbiology or chemistry.

David, thanks for the link. However, the URL to which you link for the original post from Yglesias is not correct. Looks like the correct URL is here.

@Duane Moore,
Correction made. Thanks.

"Harbor" implies knowledge. Are you arguing that Afghanistan didn't know?

@Pat,
Good question. I didn't think that "harbor" implied knowledge. But you might be right.
So, as to whether Afghanistan, by which I assume you mean the head politicians in Afghanistan, knew, I'm not sure. Yes, they knew that Osama bin Laden was there. But it's possible that they were not sure that he was behind the 9/11 bombings. Recall that the government of Afghanistan offered to turn over bin Laden to the U.s. government after 9/11 if Bush could show them sufficient evidence that bin Laden was behind it. Bush refused.
Do I believe bin Laden was responsible for 9/11? Yes. But what I believe is more extensive than what I can prove?

Does anybody really believe that "conventional law enforcement does have a pretty good track record of busting up plots"? I sure don't. I'm not in favor of much of the increased security machinery, but that statement strikes me as nonsense.

Do you believe the offer by the Taliban to turn over OBL and the rest of the Al Queda leadership to the US if sufficient evidence was turned over was made in good faith, or was it attempt to find out what the US knew and how they obtained that knowledge?

@sourcreamus,
Good question. It's hard to know the answer. Remember that the U.S. government had a good relationship with the Taliban as late as May 2001, when Colin Powell gave them a bunch of our stuff. At the time, the government was pretty sure the Taliban was hiding bin Laden, who was already on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted.

The "Troubles" of Northern Ireland killed 3,528 people between 1969 and 2001:
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/book/

For a comparison, from 1980 to 2005, 3,178 people were killed in terrorism in the United States, including those killed on 9/11:
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005

The Northern Ireland conflict involved no real safe haven (unless those fund-raising and arms-running from Libya or the US). Both Ireland and UK tried to crush the paramilitary groups operating on their own grounds, for the most part. This terrorism, taking place overwhelmingly on British and Irish soil, was still significant and highly destructive. Remove all the safe havens in the world and there will still be radicals recruiting amongst us.