Just paraphrasing the smear won't magically transform my words so that they slot into one of your comfortable jingos. Just variations on the same old riff: "non-violent, yet non-submissive"..."what they would demand of our society in order not to be targeted for destruction by them"..."peaceful coexistence"...ad nauseum.

Once again, here's what I really said, and there's no traction there for your attempts at distortion:

In practical strategic terms, an inability to understand an enemy's way of thinking is a terrible handicap, because it prevents being able to predict what the enemy will do and come up with effective countermeasures. It puts you always in the position of reacting to the enemy's moves, instead of planning ahead to counter those moves. That blind spot cedes the initiative to the enemy.

Nothing in my statement suggests in any way that understanding can't inform a military strategy...if such understanding reveals that a military response is the only possible response. Where we gain is the possibility of seeing other options that might achieve our objectives more cost-effectively and with more guarantee of success. What we lose with the willful ignorance of Bush and his ilk is that you can't think of anything better than just flailing around in the dark trying to hit the demons of your imagination. "That blind spot cedes the initiative to the enemy." I stand by what I said, and the results that Bush has obtained validate my point.

Here's just one example. If you know what your enemy values and what he doesn't, you can craft a strategy that doesn't waste lives and resources targeting what he doesn't value, and put your effort into attacking what he values. Terrorists like bin Laden don't value their own lives nor those of their follows, so it would seem to a rational person that a strategy of trying to kill terrorists faster than they can be recruited is guaranteed to be a losing strategy. On the other hand, terrorists succeed or fail based on the willingness of a significant part of the populace to support and shelter them. In bin Laden's case, much of that willingness comes from his success at positioning himself as a defender of the Arab world and the Islamic faith against "American imperialism". It's a little hard to cut off his legs when we play right into his hands and validate the imperialist charge by invading an Arab country. We hand him all the credibility at the expense of our own. We build up the enemy and weaken ourselves.

That's just plain stupid.