During the 1990s, world leaders looked at the mounting threat of terrorism, looked up, looked away, and hoped the problem would go away.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Before 9/11, absolutely, there were concerns about terrorism; but the world fundamentally changed.
It all went back to problems we had talked about before, you know, such as the British not believing in formation bombing and not believing in daytime bombing.
As the war on terrorism spreads and prolongs, the fruits of ending the threat of terrorism around the world will be tempered with a whole new series of problems to be addressed and resolved.
The 'looking forward' so prevalent in the late 1990s was bound to end once the new millennium began. Like some others of that era, I predicted a new focus on the moment, on real experience, and on what things are actually worth right now. Then 9/11 magnified this sensibility, forcing America as a nation to contend with its own impermanence.
Terrorism as a force is gone. As individuals they are all around and we will continue to look for them.
It's frustrating; terrorism is rare and largely ineffectual, yet we regularly magnify the effects of both their successes and failures by terrorizing ourselves.
The September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon prompted a fundamental shift in the American government's approach to Islamic terrorism.
When facing terrorism, especially in the wake of awful events, there is a tendency to despair, to see in the battle a problem without a solution.
Look, we constantly live looking at the issue of the threat of terrorism.
When the new wave of terrorism came on the modern world, which is the late 1960s, early 1970s, I think we spent about a decade, the United States and our allies, trying to figure out how to deal with it.