Maybe your definition of "safe" is having all these things going on and you just don't know about it. Kahn was working with North Korea on selling nuclear technology in the early 1990s. This ring was broken up recently.

I'm getting really tired of people pushing the fantasy that if only we'd had more troops in Afghanistan, that al Qaeda would have been destroyed. Some of the tactics and decisions made in Afghanistan were in hindsight, not the best ideas. But three million American troops standing by on orders while the Afghans tried to clear out Tora Bora would not have made much difference. And three million troops unable to pursue targets into Pakistan don't make much more difference than three thousand.