resources behind it were trivial.The group itself was dispatched by an organi-
zation based in one of the poorest, most remote, and least industrialized coun-
tries on earth. This organization recruited a mixture of young fanatics and
highly educated zealots who could not find suitable places in their home soci-
eties or were driven from them.
ture of relief and satisfaction.The people of the United States hoped to enjoy
a peace dividend, as U.S. spending on national security was cut following the
end of the Soviet military threat.
Soviet Union created fresh sources of instability and new challenges for the
United States. President George H.W. Bush dealt with the first of these in 1990
and 1991 when he led an international coalition to reverse Iraq's invasion of
Kuwait. Other examples of U.S. leaders' handling new threats included the
removal of nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan; the
Nunn-Lugar threat reduction program to help contain new nuclear dangers;
and international involvement in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.
members of al Qaeda, America seemed very close. In a sense, they were more
globalized than we were.
If the government's leaders understood the gravity of the threat they faced and
understood at the same time that their policies to eliminate it were not likely
to succeed any time soon, then history's judgment will be harsh. Did they
understand the gravity of the threat?
Center, and Mir Amal Kansi, who in 1993 killed two CIA employees as they
waited to go to work in Langley,Virginia, were the objects of relentless, uncom-
promising, and successful efforts to bring them back to the United States to
stand trial for their crimes.
ernment took the threat seriously, but not in the sense of mustering anything
like the kind of effort that would be gathered to confront an enemy of the first,
second, or even third rank.The modest national effort exerted to contain Ser-
bia and its depredations in the Balkans between 1995 and 1999, for example,
was orders of magnitude larger than that devoted to al Qaeda.