War on terror

The War Against Islamic Terror after Paris

The U.S. response to Islamic extremism has gone through two phases since the 9/11 attacks.  In the early years after the attacks, the Bush Administration treated Islamist terrorism as an existential threat and assumed that it was a symptom of the political and economic dysfunctionality of the greater Middle East.  Washington during this period not only strengthened homeland security and went after al-Qaeda and its affiliates, but also undermined and overthrew state sponsors of terrorism.  The Bush Administration calculated that the Middle East, like Europe and East Asia after World War II, could become a functional and normal region.