Now, six years ago, al-Qaida was planning to attack the Twin Towers. It wasn't a very nice world. And I think that if you think about six years ago, al-Qaida was preparing to attack the Twin Towers, Pakistan was allied with the Taliban, Afghanistan was the base from which al-Qaida was going to operate; the Israelis and the Palestinians had given up on a chance for -- or let me put it, the Palestinians had walked away from a chance for a Palestinian state, launched the second intifada, elected Ariel Sharon who basically said there would never be a Palestinian state and there will be a greater Israel; the North Korean were cheating on a deal that they had just signed; China and others were indifferent to that because it was a U.S.-North Korea bilateral deal; Iran was cheating on the IAEA out of sight. I could go on and on and on. That was the world in 2000 and 2001. And there is no doubt that by confronting -- oh, by the way, and Saddam Hussein was shooting at our pilots regularly in the no-fly zone and making a mockery of the Oil-for-Peace -- Oil-for-Food program and corruption was running rampant in that program. So, a worse world? I think so.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- A retrospective listing of global threats and instability around 2000 to justify actions.
- In plain terms
- The world was dangerous in 2000 with many threats from terrorism to nuclear deals.
- What can you take from it?
- Past global threats justify current actions.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Was the world really worse then?
- How do we judge past decisions?
Another view
A list of threats may oversimplify complex global dynamics.
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