On one occasion during the campaign Bush junior confessed that he really didn't know who the enemy was. "When I was coming up, with what was a dangerous world," he said, "we knew exactly who the they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who the them were. Today we're not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there." In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations this February Cheney admitted that before September 11 he had been similarly puzzled. "When America's great enemy suddenly disappeared," he said, "many wondered what new direction our foreign policy would take. We spoke, as always, of long-term problems and regional crises throughout the world, but there was no single, immediate, global threat that any roomful of experts could agree upon." He added, "All of that changed five months ago. The threat is known and our role is clear now."
What Cheney was saying, in a slightly more articulate fashion, was that the main purpose of American foreign policy was to confront an enemy—and that a worthy successor to the Soviet Union had finally emerged, in the form of international terrorism.
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