I have a lot of respect for the Israelis. When you read about the Mossad, you realize that US counterterrorism is an expensive joke. See this article by a US Marine Officer on the Israeli retaliation for the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and tell me if you agree. And make sure to check out this site for a blogburst of information and commentary on the massacre and the birth of modern terrorism. Razib adds: I followed the links. I read the article about the hit-teams that the Mossad sent to Europe, it read like a spy novel. Really good. One thing that concerns me about Americans though is our language skills (note that all the Mossad agents had second and third language skills). Just read this article in Business Week about how monolingualism is hurting Americans in the marketplace. To make hits on our enemies, we obviously need people that will physically blend in, and that's harder to do since most Americans don't much look like Arabs, Indians or Southeast Asians (the areas that Islamic terrorists are most likely to hide in). But even then, most of us that do look something like the "natives" can't speak the native languages worth a shit (I came to the United States when I was 4, and speak Bengali with my family, but I talk like an 8 year old). In addition, even if we can speak the native languages, we're quite frequently illiterate in the local script (from what I know, mostly). For instance, Americans who are mostly likely to speak good Arabic and read it too (and quite often, you need to speak the dialect of the area) are probably the least likely to get security clearance and frankly probably have the least motivation to stick their necks out in harms ways (the "Avner" group that got the job done had two out of five dead after two years). All in all, kind of stressful to think about.