Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Fortune magazine asked McCain what he saw as the greatest threat to our economy. He said:

“The absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence.”

Not so much. Glenn L. Carle, who worked for the CIA for 23 years and spent years studying the jihadist threat, says:

The "Global War on Terror" has conjured the image of terrorists behind every bush, the bushes themselves burning and an angry god inciting its faithful to religious war. We have been called to arms, built fences, and compromised our laws and the practices that define us as a nation. The administration has focused on pursuing terrorists and countering an imminent and terrifying threat. Thousands of Americans have died as a result, as have tens of thousands of foreigners ...

We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden and his disciples are small men and secondary threats whose shadows are made large by our fears. Al-Qaeda is the only global jihadist organization and is the only Islamic terrorist organization that targets the U.S. homeland ... The organization, however, has only a handful of individuals capable of planning, organizing and leading a terrorist operation ... but its capabilities are far inferior to its desires ... For the medium term, any attack is overwhelmingly likely to consist of creative uses of conventional explosives ...

Why are these views so starkly at odds with what the Bush administration has said since the beginning of the "Global War on Terror"? This administration has heard what it has wished to hear, pressured the intelligence community to verify preconceptions, undermined or sidetracked opposing voices, and both instituted and been victim of procedures that guaranteed that the slightest terrorist threat reporting would receive disproportionate weight ...

We must not take fright at the specter our leaders have exaggerated. In fact, we must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are.

Sad to say, but our own government scares me more than al Qaeda. My life is far more likely to be disrupted by an economic collapse than by terrorists.