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.