This article highlights one of the major fallacies of democracy. Those who run for office will try to pander to the majority in order to secure votes, which often is not what is best for the country. This results in a sort of political paralysis as politicians are afraid to introduce any major changes. In this case a climate of fear has become the status quo, and no one wants to be the first one to take steps to back away from that.

Of course the reaction of going to war was inappropriate, but I imagine the wars were never really about terrorism anyway.

Here is the situation: a large section of the world has members of its population which hate you and want to kill your citizens. These people cannot be found easily, as they blend in with the rest of the population and are networked together in only a very loosely organized fashion (hence terrorist cells). Some dude in his basement can get pissed off with America and decide to blow himself up for the cause. Now do you wage war on their country, pissing them off even more causing further cells to spring up, when you can't even find them in the first place?

It seems to me the better solution would be to try to get them to hate you less. Understand their culture and alter your foreign policies accordingly. Deliver food, medicine and aid to their citizens. Create stronger trading ties with their country. Remove your military bases from their region. Show them that you respect them and that you aren't the bad guys. They don't hate you for no reason.

But again, the wars probably aren't about terrorism. They are about expanding control into that region so an elite few can further line their pockets, and set up a power base in the middle east. Exactly why they hate us in the first place.