Even as the influence of the neoconservatives seems to have waned, it must be for many of them a source of enduring satisfaction that the terms al Qaeda and terrorism have become such enduring fixtures in the American political lexicon — terms that are often used just as reflexively and mindlessly by many progressives and liberals as they are by security-obsessed figures on the right.

As Scott Lucas points out in the video below, the way the term al Qaeda has functioned is to gloss over complexities and ignore the fact that Syria is not Libya, Libya is not Iraq, Iraq is not Pakistan, and al Qaeda is not a lens through which we should persist in attempting to understand the world.