Throughout all of the attacks on the United States during the past 50 years, not until the mass death caused by the airlines crashing into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, did we truly realize what kind of enemy we were up against. The utter brutality with which these terrorist organizations carry out their tasks borders on the insane. They are all either angry at the United States for not supporting their agendas, or because we support the agendas of their adversaries. Since the United States is the major military superpower, we are obligated to have a future global involvement in any conflicts that arise, whether or not we are affiliated with the UN at the time or not. In any such future engagements, we will likely be viewed suspiciously, even when we are totally neutral in a conflict. When the United States has to switch from keeping the peace, to actually enforcing it under arms, which is when the likelihood of a disputes reaction will spillover into retaliation by the parties involved that think we do not belong or are in the wrong.
In comparison the differences between domestic and foreign terrorism are not that widely separated. Almost all terrorist incidents have some common factors. There is almost always a reason for the attack, we may not know what that reason is until much later, but that driving motivation is always there. Another factor that is shared between the foreign terrorist and the domestic one it the need for financial backing, be it from benefactors or from an arm of the organization operation legitimate businesses.
The initial bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 acted as a kind of weak wake-up-call for the citizens of the United State, unfortunately it was not given the attention it should have been. The Untied States has become somewhat complacent to the threat that domestic terrorism poses. The next domestic incident that seemed to have a more profound affect on the American public was the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P.