"This book completes the work of the 9/11 Commission, expanding its specific intelligence recommendations into a comprehensive strategic action plan to defeat global terror at home and abroad. Harlan Ullman warns that the United States is mistakenly fighting a war it does not understand, waging it with flawed objectives in the wrong places, against the wrong people, and with the wrong tools. He predicts that we will not be safe until we understand that terror is only a tactic. The real threat comes from its underlying causes and political motivations." "Defining terror as a symptom not a cause, Ullman argues that unless the causes of terror are rectified or neutralized, waging a war against it will fare no better than wars on drugs, poverty, crime, and other social ills. He defines the danger as Jihadist Extremism: a political ideology as ambitious as Bolshevism and Nazism - clothed in a perverse interpretation of a religion with 1.3 billion followers - that is intent on establishing some form of a fundamentalist state, with or without borders, backed by Saudi oil money and sustained and protected by Pakistani nuclear weapons. The United States will prevail only by making essential changes to its aims and strategy, as well as to how it is organized to defeat this danger. Unless the public understands the real nature of this danger and the perils of a dysfunctional government and then demands effective action, America and its friends will never be secure."--Jacket.

Includes index.

Ten steps to defeat global terror -- Introduction: finishing business: contradictions, imperatives, and opportunities -- From destruction to disruption: the first contradiction -- Operation Iraqi Freedom: good intentions, bad judgments--idealists and realists -- What a global war on terror -- Allies or adversaries? Transforming and reinventing alliances -- The crescent of crisis -- The common defense: transformation, democratization, and other challenges -- Patriots, cops, and spies -- People are more important than guns in the rating of a ship -- Epilogue -- Afterword -- Appendix: White House assessment of the global war on terror.