<p>The new and overriding predicate of American policy -- foreign, defense, security, domestic -- is to ensure that 9/11 never happens again. If the terrorists managed to mount a second such attack anywhere in the U.S., the consequences would be destructive for the nation and calamitous for the administration. The dominant unspoken thought of the president of the U.S. must therefore be: "I will take whatever action is required to protect America from attack so that it will not be said of me 50 years from today that I was asleep at the switch at a seminal moment in our history."</p>