I'm asked, and have been asked for the last two years or more almost continuously-and usually with the person having the distinct viewpoint who asks it-isn't the world more dangerous now? And, in particular, isn't New York more dangerous, and isn't the United States more dangerous, and isn't the world more dangerous since the attacks of September 11th, 2001? After all, since then we've had, domestically, anthrax attacks, we've had several very, very horrific, horrible terrorist attacks in Bali and in Madrid. We fought a war in Afghanistan, we fought a war in Iraq, and we have the aftermath of it still going on. And we are continuously hearing about terrorist threats here, other places, warnings of all different kinds. And we live under the threat, and maybe the reality, that there will be other terrorist attacks here and in other places, and it's just a matter of when, and can we figure them out in advance, and can we remediate them if they happen? So, to many people, the world is a lot more dangerous than it was before September 11, 2001.

I have exactly the opposite opinion. I believe the world is safer than it was before September 11th, 2001, and I believe it's safer in very realistic ways-in ways that it wasn't before that. And let me see if I can explain to you why. It doesn't mean the world is perfectly safe, and it doesn't mean that we're at the level of safety that we should be at, but we're certainly better off than we were when we didn't know or didn't appreciate. The whole terrorist movement, for many people now as they look at it, almost seems like it started on September 11th, 2001. Terrorism was going on in the world on major levels for a very long time before September 11, 2001. The world was no more dangerous on that day or the day after than it was the day before or the week before or a month before or a year before, or several years before September 11-or even longer than that. I trace-and you can do this different ways-I trace the modern terrorist movement to the attacks on the Israeli Olympic team at the Munich Olympics, because if you need a starting point for analyzing it, that could probably be the best starting point. And that was when? That was in 1972.