'You Never Know Where You Are Going to End'

Still, it's understandable that Cheney's doctrine found widespread support and appeared increasingly plausible, at least for a while. The 19 attackers of 9/11 had prepared to hijack four airplanes and fly them into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill -- that is, right into the heart of America. Three of the planes found their targets; the fourth crashed in rural Pennsylvania after heroic passengers stormed the cockpit and overwhelmed the hijackers.

Roughly 3,000 people died in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington. But the attacks also served as a sudden and horrible wake-up call for the world and, above all, for America. There was to be no "end of history," as author Francis Fukuyama had predicted after communism's collapse. Now, the world's lone superpower was vulnerable and forced to deal with more confusion and different threats than it had during the Cold War.

When the White House recovered from its post-9/11 state of shock, the president and his vice president summoned their advisers to countless meetings to hammer out a strategy against terrorism. If for nothing else than to calm the public, they urgently needed to convey the message that they were acting with prudence and determination. At such historic moments, hastily formulated responses are as risky as they are unavoidable. The situation has perhaps been expressed best in a laconic statement attributed to George Kennan, an American diplomat, political scientist and historian, who came up with the strategy of containment during an age of intense rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. "You know where you begin," Kennan reportedly said. "You never know where you are going to end."

Cracking the 'Delta of Terrorism'

Today, the world knows that even more could have been begun after 9/11.

Most strategy meetings following 9/11 were matters for high-ranking officials, but others were not. It was not until years later that word leaked of a group of intellectuals and professors who went by the highly optimistic name of "Bletchley II." This moniker was coined in reference to Bletchley Park, an estate in England that became famous during World War II because it housed a team of mathematicians and cryptographers who cracked the code of the German war machine.

Christopher DeMuth had something similar in mind when he convened the post-9/11 group. At the time, DeMuth was the president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that is home to the elite of the Republican Party. This is where Cheney has delivered (and still delivers) his rare key note speeches, which attract a great deal of attention. When it comes to politics, DeMuth and Cheney are definitely on the same page.

Bletchley II aimed to crack the code of the terrorists under Osama bin Laden. The results were summed up in a document entitled "Delta of Terrorism." The delta part refers to a triad that includes Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the two countries where most of the 19 hijackers came from; the third country is Iran.

The group thought hard about the prospects for regime change in these key countries, two of which -- Saudi Arabia and Egypt -- have been among America's main allies in the Middle East for several years. According to the group's final assessment, such an objective would be desirable but unfeasible, and the same held true for Iran. Cheney, though, felt that deciding against intervention was a mistake. Likewise, at the time, no one knew how ambitiously the mullahs were pursuing nuclear weapons.

But the group thought differently when it came to Iraq. As DeMuth told historian Bob Woodward for his 2006 book "State of Denial": "We concluded that a confrontation with Saddam was inevitable. He was a gathering threat -- the most menacing, active and unavoidable threat." Such a conclusion must have been music to White House ears.

And so America fought the "war on terror." Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter, commented wryly that this was paramount to the Allies' declaring war on the blitzkrieg -- the Nazi's revolutionary form of motorized warfare -- rather than on Nazi Germany itself. As he saw it, terror was a tactic -- and not an individual that can be fought.

But Saddam Hussein was an individual, a dictator that the world believed was capable of just about anything, including producing weapons of mass destruction and passing them on to terrorist groups. And Osama bin Laden was an individual, as well, who could be hunted down in Afghanistan.

The Lessons of Failure

Today, America is reducing its involvement in Iraq, a development which is seen as a step forward. Still, a new wave of attacks is sweeping over the country, although it's difficult to say whether this is a precursor to civil war between Sunnis and Shiites or whether it means that al-Qaida has become more active again. The step forward -- at least as far as Washington is concerned -- is that hardly any more US troops are among the attacks' victims.

Things have also taken a turn for the worse in Afghanistan. While the country held elections that were marred by corruption and vote buying, a large number of NATO troops have died -- and the alliance has suffered over 300 casualties this year alone. The Taliban is showing its strength by launching attacks in the heart of Kabul. After almost eight years of war, there are few signs of stability or reconstruction.

If the entire mission continues to stagnate over the coming months, the Obama administration may have to consider withdrawing US troops. This would prove to be at least as difficult as it was in Iraq given the fact that war and terrorism have become parts of everyday life in this part of Asia and made this volatile region less safe than it has ever been.

In the final analysis, failure at war serves as a great mentor to democracies. Failure was the main reason why Bush turned his back on Cheney's advice -- and why America turned its back on them both.

When former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger -- the master of realistic, cold-blooded foreign policy -- was once asked why he supported the war against Saddam Hussein, he gave this elucidating answer: "Because Afghanistan was not enough."