Phil1750 is of course 100% right: LOTS of people saw it coming, the more prophetic among them saw it coming much earlier than the ones who started getting nervous in early/mid-2001. It is as though the names Al-Qeada and Osama binLaden were first brought to our attention courtesy of 9-11, whereas the fact is they were both being discussed for MANY months prior. The events of that day, 9-11, seemed to wipe out our memories of previous days, or at least render concrete what had merely been theoretical.
I really felt , coming into the new Bush Administration , that if Bush & Co. did not clean house THOROUGHLY, and discredit the disassembled and broken machinery of governance that 8 years of Clinton had left lying in pieces, that they could face BIG problems very soon, and that's just what happened. And the Islamic Jihadists weren't even in the forefront of my consciousness then---it took the very hard lesson of 9-11 to finally make us all aware of the history we were suddenly standing right there in the middle of, with physical and human catastrophe raining down on us ON OUR OWN GROUND. There were so many OTHER things that they could have illuminated about Clinton & Co. that they chose to abandon, all in the name of the new C-in-C being a "uniter not a divider".( I suspected that "uniter-not-divider" would prove to be a classic keeping-your-fingers-crossed cop-out) It has done NO good for nearly 6 years of this Administration to accomodate the Left---it just gives them something more to hate you for when it starts to look like it might be becoming a little successful.