Max Boot

About the author: Max Boot is the editorial features editor of the Wall Street Journal and the author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.

Many international observers have claimed that U.S. imperialism is partly to blame for global terrorism; for example, by providing assistance in the 1980s to Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan who opposed communism, the United States may have inadvertently strengthened the Taliban government that later harbored the al Qaeda terrorist network deemed responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But in the war on terrorism, the United States should play a bigger, rather than a smaller, role in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and other "rogue...