I wish I had the date of the speech so I could go back and listen to it again. During the 2000 campaign, I heard a snippet of Bush speaking on the radio in which he said something to the effect of, "We don't have a monolithic enemy like in the days of the 50s, we have instead this vague unstructured threat field" What struck me about it was that he sounded wistful, disappointed that he missed all the fun of facing down an evil empire, going toe to toe against Kruschev. He was right, of course, about the vague unstructured threat field, but I think he wanted to test himself against the consolidated forces of evil. So I think he was predisposed to look for a monolithic enemy, to see the actions of a terrorist cabal as one face of evil incarnate. He wasn't content to fight Al Qaeda, he needed to be god's warrior and declared a global war on terror.