Kathryn, I agree that Jane Harman is one of the adults, but I really don’t see how she can say what she says in light of Algeria — the country not mentioned in the excerpt that lies smack between Morocco and Libya. It’s been a hot-bed of jihadism for decades. Islamists had to be stopped from taking over the government in the early 1990s (when they won democratic elections), and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), forerunner to the Algerian Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), has a long history of affiliation with al Qaeda. Harman is right that we should pay more attention to North Africa, but it’s been a front in the war on terror for a long time.