>Why has international terrorism never been seen as such a major problem until the last week ?

As Jerry pointed out, it has been, at least in Europe. But apparently, it's OK to lose a few dozen civilians in Europe for the sake of peace. We don't think the same way. What happened on 9/11 was a few scales up in magnitude.

That's OK. You go ahead and live your life and not get involved. We'll protect you with our blood, as we have for almost a century. We'll make the hard decisions and we'll take the losses. That's OK, Len. Go back to sleep.