On this week's episode of "Security Mom," Juliette Kayyem sits down with Dr. Jessica Stern. She's spent a career in government and academia as a thought leader, advisor and author of books that look at the world of terror, including her most recent book ISIS.

"The Benghazi attacks, she said, were likely the beginning of another wave of Al Qaeda-inspired violence: smaller but still deadly. The end of totalitarian governments will lead to more disruption, ideological fervor, and black-market weapons trading. It is the undeniable consequence of regime change, whether it comes from an invasion (Iraq), a limited intervention (Libya), a nudge (Egypt), or a hands-off policy (Syria) on America's part."

"Money, our money, is ripe for the taking for the Afghans who profit from instability in a nation we keep vowing is ready for peace. The nearly 20-hour insurgent assault against the American Embassy in Kabul earlier this month was brazen and unprecedented. It seems there is no end to the insurgents’ capacity to fund and arm themselves."

"Leaving aside the tactical challenges in Afghanistan, Saturday's attack was also a stark reality check to the heroic aura surrounding our military efforts after bin Laden's death. SEAL Team 6 had been enjoying a sort of coming-out in recent weeks, including a long story in the New Yorker and a planned Hollywood movie. That exposure undermines the secrecy that is necessary for how the unit functions, and makes its 3,000 elite personnel more attractive targets for insurgents."

"[W]e can live without Karzai; we don't have a vital interest in a specific individual ruling Afghanistan. We cannot tie our continuing military engagement to a man whose only attribute is that he isn't the Taliban. Troops are dying in alarming numbers, coupled with the billion-dollars-a-month investment in a war that is now longer than Vietnam."

The Lebanon we see is the Lebanon we remember, the one we don't visit.

It was President Bush himself who insisted on calling it a global war on terror. He wanted to indicate that this was not just another piddling law enforcement action, but an all-out, full-scale military response to Sept. 11 that would involve U.S. troops around the globe. But now, apparently, a decision has been made that the language of war isn't working for him anymore. So in recent days, the "global war on terror" has been shelved in favor of the "global struggle against violent extremism."

Written Testimony of Juliette Kayyem

Teaching the "war on terror."