On September 11, 2001, the United States experienced the deadliest foreign terrorist attack in its history. As Americans grappled with the tragedy, the administration of President George W. Bush set out to comfort the nation and prepare for war. The immediate target was al Qaeda, the jihadi group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. But the enemy, according to Bush, was terrorism itself. The fight would test the United States "in ways it has not been tested before," Fouad Ajami wrote in Foreign Affairs that fall. "Washingtonhad no choice but to take up the gauntlet," Michael Scott Doran argued a few months later. "But it is not altogether clear that Americans understand fully this war's true dimensions."