Often the terrorism frame directs attention to tactics not strategy. The focus is more on capturing and killing terrorists than attitudinal, political, and economic forces that are the underlying source of threats and opportunities in national security

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Volatile Islam. Islam’s internal and external struggle over values, identity, and change is the dominant political arena in which strategic communication takes place. Analysts differ on causes and consequences. But there is widespread agreement that terrorist networks are symptomatic of a broader transformation within Islam and a continuation of the 20th century conflict between tolerance and totalitarianism. Islam’s crisis must be understood as a contest of ideas and engaged accordingly.

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Information saturation means attention, not information, becomes a scarce resource. Power flows to credible messengers. Asymmetrical credibility matters. What's around information is critical. Reputations count. Brands are important. Editors, filters, and cue givers are influential. Fifty years ago political struggles were about the ability to control and transmit scarce information. Today, political struggles are about the creation and destruction of credibility.

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Our thorough inability to grasp the final dynamic changes that led to the end of the Cold War should be unsettling to us, but after all, the outcome was also a total victory. So the Cold War template was almost mythically anointed in the decade before 9/11. Thus, with the surprise announcement of a new struggle, the U.S. Government reflexively inclined toward Cold War-style responses to the new threat, without a thought or a care as to whether these were the best responses to a very different strategic situation.
The creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the passage of the Patriot Act were two such representative organizational and legislative responses. There will surely be many more the longer the struggle goes on — because deeper expectations within the Washington policy and defense cultures still seek out Cold War models. There is an expectation that, like the Cold War, the U.S. will naturally create enduring alliances and coalitions. Moreover, if the Cold War could be described as a struggle against one form of totalitarianism — Marxist-Leninism — so too there is a desire to describe the “War on Terrorism” as a struggle against yet another form of totalitarianism — this time in the form of a radical Islamist vision. Thus the problem is presented as one of how to confront
and eventually defeat another totalitarian evil. And as with the Cold War, many now also declare that it is incumbent on the U.S. to assume leadership in this struggle.
But this is no Cold War.

The Bush administration doesn't give two hoots for diplomacy

I remembered that many people in the USA see the BBC as a mildly anti-American organisation

On a children’s program discussing the importance of trees, "Tarabisho" - the Talking Chick -- was the center of the discussion. The child moderator asked the talking chick what he would do if someone, specifically a “little boy,” were to chop down his tree. In his squeaky little voice, Tarabisho answered: "I'll fight him and make a big riot, I'll call the whole world and make a riot. I'll bring AK-47s [assault rifles] and the whole world, I'll commit a massacre in front of the house". [PA TV: Oct. 22, 2004]