Did much of the world hate America’s outsized influence on every other country? Absolutely. In October of 2000, two suicide bombers attacked the Navy destroyer USS Cole, killing seventeen soldiers while the ship refueled in Yemen. A terrorist organization called al-Qaeda was credited for the attack, punctuated by a recruitment videotape that surfaced the following summer. The tape showed al-Qaeda members celebrating the bombing of the Cole, including footage of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden reading a poem that appeared to praise the suicide mission. But this, it seemed, was the price of
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