It's going to take the shock of an entire city being destroyed somewhere in th world to show people how serious is the threat of islamic terroism.
We are, in many ways, at that point in time relative to a major third world war, that the Spanish civil war represented in the second world war.
There is a terrible and deadly potential for much worse looming on the horizon. It is apparent, at least to me, that we cannot avoid all of it at this point as 911 and events since have already shown. But, unless we act decisively and, I might add, ruthlessly, against our avowed enemies (like we ended up having to do with the Nazis and Japanese Imperialists in World War II), we may be forced to experience far worse than what World War II brough upon this country.
Better to mitigate the difficulty now, than wait for it to become much worse in the future.