"Brilliant Student, but Doesn't Test Well"

This keeps coming up, and not only from Joe Biden. Soon after Obama takes office he's going to be subject to a “test” -- or maybe a pop quiz – from Al-Qaida and/or its allies and sympathizers. But again I say, why? Why would they bother? No one as yet seems to realize that the 9-11 attacks were an act of provocation – they weren't intended to be the first and last battle of a war, they were intended to _start_ a war, which they did, and we just couldn't wait to open our veins and hemorrhage blood and money into the sands of the Near East, which we continue to do today, over 7 years later. The minute we declared war on “terror”, it was “mission accomplished” for militant Islam. They could now bog us down in the Near East for generations to come, if they so chose... fighting right in Israel's back yard (and, in fact, on territory that the radical Zionists claim as rightfully theirs), which would insure that we would stick around indefinitely... and in this, they were egged on by China and Russia, who saw a way to derail “the” superpower and finally come into their own, unchallenged (except by each other) on the world economic scene. Even Europe benefits in a perverse way, since they can now demonstrate that their version of enlightened and pacifistic totalitarianism, EU-style, is superior to our half-baked measures. So the terrorists, or militants, or insurgents, or whatever you prefer to call them, continue to stir the pot and keep us busy, on the economic ropes after so many years of exploitation in that area, and on the moral and diplomatic defensive. So why “test” Obama? What's to test? His foreign policy will be identical to Bush's in every way that counts, and that will keep the terrorists happy and their recruiting rosters bulging.