Through the 1990s, the United States was targeted by an escalating series of terrorist actions. Yet the country’s leaders continued to treat terrorism as second or third-tier problem.
President Clinton did not respond to the attack on the USS Cole in December 2000. Some suspected he feared retaliation would disrupt his Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Candidate George W. Bush promised Muslim voters that he would end the use of CIA terrorism evidence in immigration hearings.
The bill for past laxity came due on September 11, 2001. And over the remainder of the decade, other bills would arrive: the bill for allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power in 1991, the bill for not responding to Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks in the 1990s.
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