Whether it was a good or bad move is definitely open to debate.

The fact of the matter is that we put a face on Terrorism, which gave the folks at home a "someone" to rally against. I suspect that a review of Orwell's 1984 might be instructive. After Winston Smith is arrested, he finds out the arch-enemy of the people(Goldstein is the name, I believe) is really a fiction created by the folks in power to give the people in the street a target against whom to direct their anger.