All i can say to that is that it increased awareness of the vulnerability of everyone else. Ever since America abandoned the isolation policy and started taking part in other peoples' wars (and became policemen of the world).. (and completely renovated our military, etc.).. we've been viewed as the biggest, loudest, and therefore foremost potential target (especially since we were already the target of ideological hatred already.) Therefore it was no surprise when the terrorists brought the fight to our soil; let's face it we can't keep the Mexicans and Asians out, how the hell are we going to keep the Muslim extremists out? So, in the end, no one was surprised.

But then the hot spots spread to areas other than America, and awareness was raised. Euro countrymen went from watching attacks on TV, detached from the human souls here in the U.S., to watching events on TV, recognizing an area much closer to home. Sure Spain withdrew the troops, but that could mostly be due to raised awareness of their own vulnerabilities and mortality in this particular (ideological) war.

Spain withdrew its troops because the vast majority of Spanish citizens were opposed to the war and were pissed at Aznar for being Bush's bitch. Combine that with the clumsy way he tried to pin the bombings on ETA and it's no wonder his entire national security stance was discredited. After Germany I think Spain has the highest percentage of anti-war people in the EU. Europeans generally view the occupation of Iraq as a catalyst for terrorism and not as "the central front in the War on Terror" as is official US policy, withdrawing troops from Iraq is the obvious rational thing to do. If you want a measurement of EU commitment to anti-terror efforts look at the extensive intelligence sharing that goes on and all the blood and money they are funneling into the real fronts in the fight against Islamist guerrilla movements.

I meant terrorism in the context of what has been thrown against America.

This is one of the many problems with the whole War on Terror formulation. What the fuck is TERROR? Why are the thousands of terrorist attacks carried out by ETA or the IRA not terrorism as defined by the War on Terror? The real answer is that there is no difference, except that the ETA and the IRA didn't inspire the same kind of totalitarian madness that right-wingers push as the solution to TERROR and so they must be dismissed because the new TERROR is not like the old ones.