In a long op-ed piece published in the March 25, 2007 edition of the Washington Post former President Carter's  National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, declared war on the War on Terror in terms remarkably similar to those I have used in Trapped in the War on Terror and similar to the arguments made by John Mueller in Overblown.  See his piece "Terrorized by the War on Terror."  Brzezinski understands the hugely exaggerated nature of the terrorist threat and something of the political agendas it was invented to serve.  He also points to  the self-perpetuating dynamics the War on Terror has acquired in associaiton with the culture of fear created around it and the participation of the media, politicians, government agencies, and various interests groups--all caught in a feeding frenzy of sensationalist competition for attention and in desperate efforts to make their own self-interests appear to be the snake-oil that will cure  the terrorism problem.

As this point of view stops being associated with maverick intellectuals and begins to be articulated by well-known pundits it will be interesting to see how long it will take before some politicians, apart from Representative Dennis Kucinich, to overcome their fear of acussations of having a "pre-9/11 mentality" to speak truly about the biggest enemy we face--the War on Terror itself.