Today's Terrorism Didn't Start with 9/11 -- It Started with the '90s

Peter Bergen wrote for CNN about the history of terrorism: 

In the remote mountains of the Hindu Kush in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, CNN correspondent Peter Arnett asked Osama bin Laden, "What are your future plans?"

With the slightest smirk, bin Laden replied, "You'll see them and hear about them in the media, God willing."

That interview took place in March 1997. It was bin Laden's first television interview, and it was the first time the al-Qaeda leader declared war on the United States to a Western audience.

But there's another reason why this interview still stands out two decades later. It shows how much the features of terrorism that we live with today -- from jihadist acts to eruptions of violence from the far right to the concept of the "lone wolf" -- all had their roots in the 1990s.