PERSPECTIVE| FES WASHINGTON The threat of terrorism is ebbing, but US counterterrorism policies are not A critical look at US counterterrorism efforts amid the NSA scandal GARRETT M. GRAFF July 2013  »The truth is, we campaign in poetry, but when we’re elected, we’re forced to govern in prose,« former New York Governor Mario Cuomo famously declared in a speech in 1985. Two decades later, Barack Obama learned a similar lesson in the transition from campaigning to governing.  The realities of the world very quickly intruded on President Obama’s hope and change agenda after being sworn in. Unraveling the Bush era»War on Terror« policies proved harder than the Obama Administration had planned, but moreover, the Administration liked many of these policies.  Edward Snowden’s revelations of classified CIA and NSA programs demonstrate how entrenched the Bush Administration view of fighting terrorism has become. Nearly every policy and program the Obama Administration inherited has been expanded.  The extent of the US government’s surveillance system is stunning but not surprising. The most upsetting aspect of PRISM, however, is not its sophistication and scope of data collection but the fact that it embodies the very worst of counterterrorism culture.  The US approach to fighting»terrorism« has four major problems: 1. The US govern­ment is dedicating massive resources to peripheral threats, while rising threats like cybersecurity and WMD proliferation are being neglected, and»everyday« threats due to gun violence take far more American lives; 2. The US still does not know what it is looking for: The NSA is collecting too much information to process or study properly, and a huge amount of resources have been wasted on bad intelligence; 3. Americans are unable to have a rational conversation about trade-offs between security, freedom, and convenience. It is politically impossible to step back from policies once started; 4. Congress has no real oversight, and there is no ability for an informed public debate.