Beg to differ. Many Americans have thought a lot about Islam because of the 1979 Tehran embassy siege, the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, the 1985 highjacking of TWA flight 847 from Athens to Rome, the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and the murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, the 1972 murder of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich, the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, the 2000 USS Cole bombing, the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing, etc.
What’s different is that it finally came to our shores in 2001 because we did almost nothing about it in the preceding 40 years.
Ask average Joe-6Pack on street about all those foreign events. Most never heard the term “jihad” before 911.
But still 1200 years is lot longer than 34 years (Iran hostage taking).
What I know is this...it would’nt have mattered if US had no military events abroad. So long you are a non-believer of the prophet, you are a Kafir...to be destroyed.