Post #113975 by kha_o on Sat, Sep 11, 2004 9:14 PM

February 26, 1993 - bombing of World Trade Center in NYC - 6 dead, 1000+ injured

June 25, 1996 - bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arbia - 20 dead, 372 injured

August 7, 1998 - bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya - 225 dead, 4085 injured

October 12, 2000 - bombing of USS Cole in Yeman - 17 dead, 39 injured

...but the average American didn't know who bin Laden was until September 11, 2001.

It wasn't until terrorism was over the US's doorstep (and not a club in Germany, a plane over Scotland, a pub in Belfast, an embassy in Tehran, an Olympic Village in Munich, a US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, a department store in London, an airport in Rome) that most Americans gave a damn.

We then put the blinders up for Moscow, Madrid, Beslan, and too many other places in the past three years.

Honor the victims of 9/11, but we Americans seem to have an issue with walking a mile in someone else's shoes and not waking up to a problem until years after the fact.

Terrorism wasn't invented in 2001...

...just like the crisis in the Slavic states didn't begin in 1998.

...World War II did not start in 1941

...World War I didn't start in 1917