Yesterday I was using the Global Terrorism Database to check some suprisingly low figures on what percentage of terrorist acts are committed by Muslims. (Short answer: Worldwide since 2000, about 80%, rather than 0.4 - 6% as given in various sources.) But I found some odd patterns in the data for the United States. Look at this chart of terrorist acts in the US which meet GTD criteria I-III and are listed as "unambiguous":
Your analysis is surprisingly Americo-centric. The 1970s saw very serious terrorism (far worse than America) in the UK, Germany and Italy, all of which are now very peaceful countries. Did 9/11 also make terrorism un-Italian?
Secondly, your timing is all wrong. The fall in terrorism worldwide long predates the rise of specifically Islamic terrorism.
Thirdly, Islamic terrorism is the intellectual and organisational descendant of secular Arab terrorism and is received in much the same way. The only innovation is the suicide bomber. Yet in the period that you claim terrorism was 'cool,' there was no shortage of horrific atrocities committed by) Arab terrorists - often in co-ordination with Western groups, such as the RAF. Do you think those were seen as 'cool'? Abu Nidal was the bin Laden of his day, and got much the same popular portrayal. In fact, the keffiyeh-clad Arab terrorist as staple villain in action movies hasn't changed one jot in forty years, just that then he would be a member of PFLP or Fatah, and now al Qaeda.
It is not surprisingly Americo-centric for a post titled "How Islamic terrorists reduced terrorism in the US". I acknowledged that there was a bigger (numeric) fall in terrorism in the US in the 70s. The fall in the US after 2000, though, is probably as big or bigger when expressed as a percent drop rather than as an absolute drop. Equal efforts at reducing a variable results in drops that are similar by percentage more than by absolute number. (That means the effort to go from 100 cases per year to 10 is more similar to the effort to go from 10 ... (read more)