We didn't pay attention. After the Berlin wall and soviet communism crumbled and fell, there were those who warned of ensuing corruption to ME areas and the threats that could develop. And we didn't pay attention to them.
At a time when America needed strong leadership to recognize that many changes and challenges would come from those events, not all predictable, the country itself didn't think it through and went blissfully on it's merry way, the cold war threat now miraculously "gone".
We lost focus, and didn't have a sense of what's important, and that's deadly in this game of life.
Prairie