The price we paid for the war on terror

In our single-minded focus on Islamic fanaticism, we missed China’s transformation from a commercial power into an ambitious political power. We failed to appreciate the significance of economic growth in China’s neighborhood. When President George W. Bush traveled to Asia in late 2001, he spoke to his Malaysian and Indonesian interlocutors about their resident terrorist cells. His Chinese colleagues, meanwhile, talked business and trade…

Thanks to the war on terror, we missed what might have been a historic deal on immigration with Mexico. Because Latin America was irrelevant to the war on terror, we lost interest in, and influence on, that region. The same goes for Africa, except for those countries that have al-Qaeda cells. In the Arab world, we aligned ourselves with authoritarian regimes we believed would help us fight Islamic terrorism, despite the fact that their authoritarianism was an inspiration to fanatical Islamists. If we are viewed with suspicion in Egypt and Tunisia, that is part of the reason.

Finally, we stopped investing in our infrastructure — think what $3 trillion could do for roads, research, education or even private investment, if part of that sum had simply been left in taxpayers’ pockets — and we missed the chance to rethink our national energy policy. After Sept. 11, the president could have declared an emergency and explained to the nation that wars would have to be fought and paid for — perhaps, appropriately, through a gasoline tax.