Since September 11, 2001 hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on counterterrorism efforts? Have they made us safer?

In Top Secret America – 9/11 to the Boston Bombings, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dana Priest investigates a top-secret world that, she writes, “has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”

But the consequences of all that work are pretty clear, aren't they? Iraq has been destabliized, so has Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Try visiting any one without getting killed.

The Cold War has also been revived and it is difficult to call the leaders who are fanning the flames anything less than stooges

Despte America's capacity to export Tea Party Politics to the Middle East and elsewhere, make no mistake about it. The world is still as suicidal as it was during World War I and that is a lesson that has to be learned before it is too late.

The bottom line is clear; if we do not turn our enemies, real or imagined, into our friends, we are only hurting ourselves.