World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and culminating in 9/11, Islamic terrorism replaced the Soviets as the essential adversary in US foreign policy. It may have provided solace to the military and its contractors that “terrorism” was a more reliable long-term foe than the Soviets. Since terrorism is a tactic, not a nation, an imprecisely defined “terrorism” had the allure of an enemy that could never be vanquished. We can imagine the defense contractors’ relief when Vice President Dick Cheney declared the “Long War”7—one, he promised, would last for generations—with battlegrounds “scattered in
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