Arrested Development.

words. 

"For more than a decade, the U.S. government has been focused on one type of threat above all others: terrorism. This obsession has not only been used to justify an erosion of Americans' privacy, it has opened them to other dangers and, paradoxically, made it easier for terrorists to achieve success.

Let me explain.

During the years I worked in the Pentagon, 2010 and 2011, officials there were responding to what many understood to be an implied directive from the commander in chief: to bring the risk of terrorist attack on U.S. soil to 0%. The entire apparatus swiveled toward that single goal.

...the single-minded focus on that task has led to myopia elsewhere. I have repeatedly watched members of the intelligence community, in their drive to target individuals, overlook other critical aspects even of violent extremism, including how the groups' structures evolve, how they are financed or what underlying grievances fuel them.

...Demanding zero risk of terrorism at home, moreover, makes it easier for terrorists to succeed. If the bar is set at zero, then a single successful attack means the terrorists have triumphed. And it is likely to produce the kind of dramatic overreaction that, according to Osama bin Laden's own writings, is Al Qaeda's ultimate aim: disrupting the U.S. economy, obtaining a disproportionate psychological impact and eroding the trademark values and liberties of U.S. society.

...It's time to regain some balance. A frightened public needs its leadership to work to bring panic within the bounds of reason, not play to it.

No one denies that terrorism is a real and ongoing threat that must be addressed. No one denies the tragedy of lives that have been cut short or wrecked by terrorist attacks. But those tragedies are no more bitter than deaths due to other preventable threats. It is time for the United States, and its political leaders, to begin getting over it."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Blinded by the war on terrorism