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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In the '70s, terrorism was much more serious, in that many more people got killed.
We have struggled with terrorism for a long time. In the Reagan administration, I was a hawk on the subject. I said terrorism is a big problem, a different problem, and we have to take forceful action against it. Fortunately, Ronald Reagan agreed with me, but not many others did.
Terrorism takes us back to ages we thought were long gone if we allow it a free hand to corrupt democratic societies and destroy the basic rules of international life.
In some ways, September 11, 2001, seems a long time ago. Yet we have done so much in only a few years, and we will continue to do so in the future, to prevent such attacks on America.
The most successful terrorist group in the United States for almost 70 years was the Ku Klux Klan. They hated Catholics, Jews, and blacks. They were prone to violence.
Before 9/11, absolutely, there were concerns about terrorism; but the world fundamentally changed.
Look, we constantly live looking at the issue of the threat of terrorism.
In the late Fifties and early Sixties, opposition to state terror and aggression and torture and so on was zero. That was a horrible time: the massive Kennedy terror operation against Cuba, the first attacks on Vietnam in 1962, the imposition of national security states in South America.
The war in Iraq, the abuse of detainees, electronic eavesdropping, Guantanamo Bay - these things were all done on our behalf and they may turn out in the end to have created more terrorists.
While there's been much progress on terrorism, there's still much work to do and it is very important that the countries work together in order to address this threat together.
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