Three to four thousand people, nearly all American citizens, perished in the aircraft highjackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001. They were murdered for political reasons by a loosely integrated foreign terrorist political organization called al-Qaeda. Below I ask four questions relation to these attacks: First, what is the nature of the threat posed by al-Qaeda? Second, what is an appropriate strategy for dealing with this? Third, how might the U.S. defense establishment have the change to fight this adversary? And fourth, what does the struggle against al-Qaeda mean for overall U.S. foreign policy?