After the temporary destruction of al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan, it is now generally agreed, something went terribly wrong with America's response to 9/11. Opinions differ, however, about exactly what went wrong and why. Some who supported the Iraq war say that the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the most visible and therefore easiest-to-criticize part of the proclaimed war on terror, was executed badly. The problem lies deeper than faulty execution, however. Things went so calamitously wrong because of a mistaken way of seeing, and setting priorities among, the threats to American national security disclosed by 9/11.

All of the major errors of the Administration discussed in this book – the misbegotten war itself, the bungled occupation, the abuse of detainees who were not given a serious chance to challenge the alleged reasons for their confinement, and the concentration of unaccountable power in the hands of woefully unprepared executive officials – reflected a fundamental misreading of the terrorist threat. The prism was defective and, as a consequence, very real dangers were misperceived or grasped only obliquely, hazily, and selectively. For various reasons, some obvious and others less so, the key decision makers placed excessive emphasis on enemies who could be unilaterally and definitively defeated, and devoted insufficient attention to threats that require patient management over time, in cooperation with allies, without any expectation of triumphant finality.