got this from andrew sullivan, one of whom's readers wrote this to him in an email after seeing garry shandling, of all people, on bill maher's show.

On 9/11, Al Qaeda had no expectation of a traditional military victory against the United States. The point of the attack was economic -- to draw the U.S. into expensive and protracted foreign wars that would deplete our resources and destabilize our government. By invading Iraq, George Bush became the happy idiot to assist Al Qaeda in this goal. Now, Sarah Palin and John McCain take the leaders of Al Qaeda at their word when they say Iraq is the major front in the war on terror.

Neither consider the possibility that Al Qaeda wants Iraq to be the major front because it furthers their goal of weakening the U.S. while inflicting minimal damage on their operations.

Seven years after 9/11, we are seeing Al Qaeda's long-term goal being realized: the destabilization and economic collapse of the United States. Even as it's happening, the people who supported it all along want to continue facilitating our own long-term disintegration by clinging to simplistic concepts of traditional military victory and defeat. In this sense, they are possibly the most myopic, least strategic thinkers in the history of this nation.

As Gary Shandling said, with this approach, our only hope of killing Osama Bin Laden is that he'll laugh himself to death.

the really awful thing is that bin laden pretty much said this was the plan from the get-go. it was supposed to be afghanistan where it happened; bin laden figured he could do to us what he and the mujahideen did to the soviets and bog us down in afghanistan for a decade or two, bleeding our military and our national will slowly but surely by drawing us into a land war in asia (which, as anyone who has seen the princess bride knows, is the only blunder, historically speaking, greater than going in against a sicilian when death in on the line). that we were smart enough to buy off the warlords that were going to help him bleed us redounds to our credit as a nation. that we didn't finish the job ourselves more or less completely erases that credit, but for a while it looked like we were actually smart and savvy enough to out-strategize some spoiled rich asshole whose worldview is stuck in the middle ages.

lucky for him, we've got our own spoiled rich asshole, who didn't like the gift-wrapped war he got for christmas and so he decided he was gonna get the one he wanted that santa didn't bring him, and show his daddy up to boot, come hell or high water (pace new orleans).

and now here we are, half a decade later, our much-vaunted military near-broken, our economy swirling down the toilet (thanks to the aforementioned spoiled rich asshole's aversion to economic oversight), trillions of dollars in debt to the people who brought us lead-painted toys and milk with industrial additives to boost the apparent protein content, and, bless their li'l hearts, one major party's presidential ticket thinks we should keep on down the road we've been travellin'.

it's like the manchurian candidate, except i'm convinced that nobody in bin laden's organization is that smart. it's just that these fucking people really are that fucking dumb.

after all, one of the definitions of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. i guess when you create your own reality, maybe that works. unfortunately, it only works in the make-believe reality inside your head, which doesn't really overlap with the world you share with the rest of us.

clap all you want, kids. tinkerbell's dead.