The whole "war on terror" metaphor has always been absurd. You'd think that the U.S. might have learned something from observing terrorism in European nations all these years. This is the sort of "war" that will never have a clear end, or a clear victor. It may, however, have a clear loser, and I sincerely hope the U.S. is not going to end up occupying that role.

During a recent episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, excerpts from a 2004 speech by Osama bin Laden were examined to provide insight into his goals. He spoke about wanting the U.S. to "bleed until bankruptcy," describing a process very similar to how their own war in Afghanistan bankrupted the former Soviet Union.

He talked about how easy it was to pull Bush into this trap, and it was impossible to disagree with this assessment.

Osama bin Laden in 2004 said his tactical goal was to distract the United States from pursuing our own interests and force us instead to spend ourselves into oblivion, in a futile effort to try to stop anyone from using terrorist tactics against the U.S.

Bush really screwed up by invading Iraq, but Obama does not seem to be doing much better when it comes to not playing right into bin Laden's plan.

Between Bush and Obama, the amount of money already spent in Iraq and Afghanistan is staggering. The cost of even real universal healthcare pales by comparison. Just think of what we could be doing domestically with these funds!

The hard truth of the matter is that it seems like the only way to truly defeat al Qaeda is to refuse to fight their war. Sadly, this would require Americans to make a fairly major cultural shift, recognizing that dumping money into invasive airport security procedures is both wasteful and ineffective, coming to terms with the inevitability of terrorist attacks no matter how good our defenses might be, letting go of the childish need for revenge, and choosing resilience and over fear. The question may well be whether we can do this before we bankrupt ourselves.

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