Sandy Berger rejected this proposal for a wider war. The August 1998 cruise missile strikes against al Qaeda had been a political disaster at home and abroad. The repeated firing of cruise missiles at impoverished, long-suffering Afghanistan—without strong intelligence about who would be killed and with the near-certainty of civilian deaths—would only raise bin Laden’s standing in the Islamic world, foster new al Qaeda recruitments, and draw worldwide condemnation of the United States.
