Yes, it's funny how badly perspectives have been skewed. The USSR was a much more serious threat. Either they could've participated in a nuclear war leading to billions of deaths, or precipitated a land war in Europe that would have led to mere tens of millions of deaths the old-fashioned way.
Terrorists simply don't have that kind of destructive capacity. It requires a modern industrial state; they don't have that. And once a modern industrial state is acquired, governing elites are curiously reluctant to sacrifice it on the altar of pure ideology.
So why more money is spent on terrorists than communists is a bit of a mystery to me.
That, and because terrorism works: it causes terror, and people want to be protected from this terrifying threat, even if in reality it's not a very big threat.
If the USA was really interested in saving the most lives possible, it would use War on Terror funds to do cancer research instead. Instead, it likes having the excuse to issue legislation such as the Patriot Act.
As the US is the only country to actually use a nuclear weapon against another, the long-view of the empire's historical narrative would be interesting to see.
Terrorists simply don't have that kind of destructive capacity. It requires a modern industrial state; they don't have that. And once a modern industrial state is acquired, governing elites are curiously reluctant to sacrifice it on the altar of pure ideology.
So why more money is spent on terrorists than communists is a bit of a mystery to me.