The State Department has issued a travel warning for U.S. citizens visiting Europe. The alert comes after U.S. and European officials said there was a credible threat of commando style terror attacks against Britain, France, and Germany, similar to the attack in Mumbai almost two years ago.

Although many travelers were left wondering what to do in the face of a broad warning, the Obama administration has decided to take decisive action by stepping up drone strikes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border against militants affiliated with the Haqqani network, Hafiz Gul Bahadur’s group, and other terrorist outfits.

As I write today over at the Skeptics blog on the National Interest (Online):

Nearly a decade after 9/11, these issues underscore a deeper problem with U.S. policy: determining what constitutes a terrorist sanctuary and deciding what course of action is most prudent for eradicating them.

Drone strikes are imperative for a policy of offshore balancing. Nevertheless, they are piecemeal, tactical efforts that do little to alter the Pakistani security establishment’s support for Islamist proxies as a hedge against India, Pakistan’s primary enemy. Indeed, massive aerial bombings did not win the war in Vietnam, and it’s not going to change the bigger picture in South Asia.

I go on to mention that:

…the neo-jihadists that threaten America are not held hostage to the outdated notion of “territory.” Only we are. We seem to have forgotten that 9/11 was planned not only in Afghanistan, but also in Germany, Spain, and the United States. Even the radicalized youths suspected of plotting the recent Mumbai-style terror plot in Europe came from the same mosque in Hamburg where the 9/11 hijackers gathered.

Check out the entire post here!