Fareed Zakaria on a delusional rant

I find little to agree with Mr Zakaria generally but I found this particularily interesting. Anyone with their heads out of their asses know the Pentagon is not the biggest cause of our spending, but entitlements. But don't let reality get in the way of a good yarn.

End the war on terror and save billions

By Fareed Zakaria

As we debate whether the two parties can ever come together and get things done, here’s something President Obama could probably do by himself that would be a signal accomplishment of his presidency: End the war on terror. Or, more realistically, start planning and preparing the country for phasing it out.

For 11 years, the United States has been operating under emergency wartime powers granted under the 2001 “Authorization for Use of Military Force.” That is a longer period than the country spent fighting the Civil War, World War I and World War II combined. It grants the president and the federal government extraordinary authorities at home and abroad, effectively suspends civil liberties for anyone the government deems an enemy and keeps us on a permanent war footing in all kinds of ways.

Now, for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, an administration official has sketched a possible endpoint...

...If you want to know why we’re in such a deep budgetary hole, one large piece of it is that we have spent around $2 trillion on foreign wars in the past decade. Not coincidentally, we have had the largest expansion of the federal government since World War II. The Post’s Dana Priest and William Arkin have described how the U.S. government has built 33 new complexes for the intelligence bureaucracies alone. The Department of Homeland Security employs 230,000 people.

A new Global Terrorism Index this week showed that terrorism went up from 2002 to 2007 – largely because of the conflicts in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq — but has declined ever since. And the part of the world with the fewest incidents is North America. It could be our vigilance that is keeping terror attacks at bay. But it is also worth noting, as we observe the vast apparatus of searches and screening, that the Transportation Security Administration’s assistant administrator for global strategies has admitted that those expensive and cumbersome whole-body scanners have not resulted in the arrest of a single suspected terrorist. Not one.

Of course there are real threats out there, from sources including new branches of al-Qaeda and other such groups. And of course they will have to be battled, and those terrorists should be captured or killed. But we have done this before, and we can do so in the future under more normal circumstances. It will mean that the administration will have to be more careful — and perhaps have more congressional involvement — for certain actions, such as drone strikes. It might mean it will have to charge some of the people held at Guantanamo and try them in military or civilian courts.

In any event, it is a good idea that the United States find a way to conduct its anti-terrorism campaigns within a more normal legal framework, rather than rely on blanket wartime authority granted in a panic after Sept. 11.

No president wants to give up power. But this one is uniquely positioned to begin a serious conversation about a path out of permanent war.

His complains of spending two trillion over the last ten years ring kinda hollow. He has no issue with a "temporary stimulus program" that has been putting almost a trillion dollars into the baseline every year to pay off leftist causes. Or the fact B Hussein Obama and the Senate Democrats haven't passed a budget in over three years. Or that Obamacare will cost us trillions in less time. No what is driving our deficits is the defense budget. Also, do you think B Hussein Obama and you could "... start planning and preparing the country for phasing it out." in the War on Poverty? That is what is bankrupting this country.

I would say that's pathetic but this may be even more so. His support of America fighting terrarium as a legal matter, not a national security issue. Hey Fareed, that is one of the excuses Bubba Clinton gave for not taking custody of UBL in the 90s. And we know the results. These people don't care about having their rights read to them. Also they are willing to die if it kills you. Kinda hard to take them alive for trial.

Also Fareed you would have more credibility on this if you would have demanded some sort of Congressional authorization for us firing missiles into Libya. Just saying.