The scenarios of biological or chemical warfare painted in detail by the American media during the months after September 11...only betray the inability of the government to determine the magnitude of the danger.

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

I cannot imagine a context that would some day, in some manner, make the monstrous crime of September 11 an understandable or comprehensible political act

What was new was the symbolic force of the targets struck. The attackers did not just physically cause the highest buildings in Manhattan to collapse; they also destroyed an icon in the household imagery of the American nation.

Manhattan... capital of the 20th century, a city that has fascinated me for more than three decades.

Instead of the international police action we had hoped for during the war in Kosovo, there are wars again - conducted with state-of-the-art technology, but still in the old style

Historically, terrorism falls in a category different from crimes that concern a criminal court judge.