The Flyswatter Doctrine

This article is on the same wavelength with my thoughts on the level of threat from non-state-sponsored terrorist outfits, Hezbollah being a different beast entirely.  Key excerpt:

A third technique is to exaggerate the importance and effectiveness of the “affiliated groups” linked to al-Qaeda central. In particular, alarmists point to the al-Qaeda affiliate in chaotic Yemen, proclaiming it to be the “deadliest” and the “most aggressive” of these and a “major threat.”

Insofar as it threatens the United States, the Yemen group has been elevated by two efforts at international terrorism, both of which failed abysmally.

It apparently supplied the 2009 underwear bomber with an explosive that he was unable to detonate, one that, a test by the BBC suggests, might not have downed his plane even if it had gone off.

The other failure is the foiled effort to set off bombs contained within laser printers on planes bound for the United States in 2010. The organization explained that one of their packages contained a copy of Charles Dickens’s novel Great Expectations to express its optimism about the operation’s success even as the group promised more such attacks. The optimism, and thus far the promise, have gone unfulfilled.

With that track record, the group may pose a problem or concern to the United States. But it scarcely presents a “major threat.” [emphasis mine]

It's taken a long time, but people seem to be grasping that this "nation-building" thing is a no-go, which should trigger a re-assessment of strategy and tactics used to deal with jihadi idiots the world over.

"Should" is of course the operative word but there are bureaucratic and other empires built on over-reacting to minimal threats.  This means that any changes will have economic and/or political causes.  We are seeing a manifestation of that with "the Obama Doctrine" of frequent little taps of the big stick which is the American armed forces.

I, btw, approve of this as the way to deal with these threats: surgically, remorselessly and frequently.  Just because something is a minimal strategic threat doesn't mean that you ignore it, just use the tools appropriate to the job.