Unfortunately, both countries are still very much in the terrorism business. Second, the national targets of terrorism have shifted. The nations that used to be perennial targets were Israel, the United States, and to some extent Western European nations. We all continue to be the targets of terrorism, but Arab nations increasingly have become targets and the bloodiest battlefields in the war of terrorism. In Egypt and Algeria, hundreds of people have been killed by terrorists in the last few years.
Terrorist movements exist even in such unlikely places as Saudi Arabia and Libya.
This change and shift in the national targets of terrorism has resulted in a significant reevaluation by Middle Eastern governments of their attitude toward terrorism and their willingness to take steps in conjunction with the United States in fighting terrorism. We witnessed with terrifying clarity in the Tokyo subway what a terrorist group can do with a weapon of mass destruction, by which I mean a chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon. The Aum Shinrikyo, allegedly a religious cult but actually a terrorist group, used sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway and had used biological weapons they developed on U.S. targets in Japan. Fortunately, their biological weapons failed, but terrorists in general have already begun using weapons of mass destruction, and reliable intelligence indicates other terrorist groups are actively seeking chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger wrote an article for the op-ed page of today's Washington Times about that bombing, providing the clearest rationale to date for what the United States did.