Kingdaddy at Arms and Influence has a post worth reading on the current state of the US government’s approach to terrorism:

On all these counts, the US government has failed in its post-9/11 counterterrorism campaign. Claims of making significant arrests, such as the Lodi and Miami cases, turn out to be questionable. Either the suspects prove not to have belonged to terrorist groups, or the groups themselves have appeared laughable.

[…]

The US government has failed on other measures of credibility. Domestic terrorist threats have been largely overlooked, or confused with foreign terrorist groups. (Remember the Miami kung fu club’s supposed “links” to Al Qaeda?) Rather than struggling to preserve habeas corpus, the presumption of innocence, the right to face one’s accusers, privacy, and other sacred American institutions, the Administration has appeared eager to demolish them. Rather than encouraging sobriety about terrorist risks, the Administration has made vague, alarming warnings about the terrorist in the woodpile.

I think that this is on target in terms of assessing the current state of anti-terrorism policy in the current administration. I am not sanguine about the possibility that a new administration will bring a more intelligent and sober approach to the topic. We seem altogether too content to look at terrorism in terms of bogeymen.