The chart above was made from a new Rasmussen Poll -- done on June 10th and 11th of a random national sample of 966 likely voters, with a 3 point margin of error.
Respondents were asked who is winning the "war on terror". As you can see, a record high number of Americans (44%) now say the terrorists are winning, while only 27% say the United States and its allies are winning. This is a bit puzzling, since there have been few incidents of terrorism in the United States, and only slightly more among our European allies.
Why would Americans think that? It's because the Republicans (and too many Democrats) have lumped the fighting in the Middle East in with terrorism -- and talk about them like they are the same thing. But they are not.
The fighting in the Middle East has little or nothing to do with terrorism. It is a religious civil war, and even if ISIS and its allies are defeated in that war (or the Taliban and al-Queda in Afghanistan), it will do nothing to stop terrorist acts -- because terrorists don't need to occupy a country to carry out terrorist acts. They can always find a hiding place somewhere to plan their nefarious deeds.
The truth is that we are winning the war on terrorism. But we are losing the land war in the Middle East. If anything, we are just creating more enemies there by killing indiscriminately and including innocent civilians. We should not be in that land war. Neither side is truly our friend.
We should let the religious nuts in that part of the world fight their own battle, and bring ALL of our troops back home. Then put all our effort into fighting terrorists the proper way -- with good intelligence and law enforcement, backed up by our courts.
