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A central claim of the Bush administration's foreign policy is that the spread of democracy in the Middle East is the cure for terrorism.

Afghanistan and Iraq were lumped together in what was called a 'global war on terrorism.'

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon prompted a fundamental shift in the American government's approach to Islamic terrorism.

America and its allies are engaged in a war against a terrorist movement that spans all corners of the globe. It is sparked by radical ideologues that breed hatred, oppression, and violence against all of their declared enemies.

Less about politics, 'The Path to 9/11' focused on the emergence of radical Islamic terror as a clear and present American threat.

Faced with the collapse of Iraq into something like Lebanon - or worse, Somalia - the Bush administration opted for a new counterinsurgency strategy. Violence was reduced because, for the first time since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iraqis felt that there was a force capable of dominating the situation and ensuring basic order.

As the war on terrorism spreads and prolongs, the fruits of ending the threat of terrorism around the world will be tempered with a whole new series of problems to be addressed and resolved.

This paradigm of the war on terror, connecting all kinds of armed resistance around the globe in one huge ideological framework, as a new ideology at a stage in history when most of the major ideologies are gone, does not reflect the facts on the ground.

The U.S. is friends with dictatorial regimes, then invades places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and what happens afterwards is a catastrophe. In the place of their leaders, fundamentalist movements that use the name of Islam spring up, and all that's left is terror and bloodshed.

I believe that the war against terrorism and the war against poverty in these times of turmoil go together. So you - when you fight one, you have to fight the other.