Four guys in a gym in Leeds

Juan Cole comments on the end of the GWOT:

. . . they have finally realized that if they are fighting a war on terror, the enemy is four guys in a gym in Leeds. It isn't going to take very long for people to realize that a) you don't actually need to pay the Pentagon $400 billion a year if that is the problem and b) whoever is in charge of such a war isn't actually doing a very good job at stopping the bombs from going off . . . former CIA analyst Marc Sageman estimates the number of radical Muslims who can and would do significant harm to the US in the hundreds. That's right. The old "war on terror" was a war of the world's sole superpower on a few hundred people. (I exclude Iraq because it is not and never was part of any 'war on terror,' though the incredible incompetence of the Bush administration has contributed to the ability of terrorists to operate there.)

Cole also has an interesting summary of how a suicide bomber is created -- worth reading.