The Republican's have been recently trying to scare Americans -- using the recent success of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. They want Americans to think that we must fight ISIS militarily and defeat them, or the U.S. will be in substantial danger of a new wave of islamic terrorist attacks. And a new poll shows that propaganda campaign may actually be working.
It is the new Gallup Poll done between June 2nd and 7th of a random national sample of 1,527 adults, with a margin of error of 3 points. That survey shows that nearly half (49%) of all Americans fear that they, or their family members, could be the victim of a terrorist act. That's the highest percentage since right after the September 2001 attack on New York City.
And these Republicans want the public to fear an attack by islamic terrorists (and have acted to prevent the government from exposing the much greater danger from home-grown non-islamic terrorists). But the truth is much different from the fear the GOP is trying to generate.
First, there have been 241 deaths from terroristic actions in the United States since September of 2011 -- and 211 of those deaths have been caused by home-grown non-islamic killers. Only 30 deaths in the last 14 years have been caused by islamic terrorists. That means Americans have a 2 in 330,000,000 chance of being killed by an islamic terrorists in this country -- an infinitesimal percentage. An American would have a far greater percentage of being struck by lightening, or being killed by a toddler playing with a parent's gun -- or even a greater chance of winning the lottery.
So, why are the Republicans trying to scare Americans about the possibility of being killed by an islamic terrorist (when that chance is ridiculously low)? It's all they have left. The American people are starting to realize that the GOP's economic policy (tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of financial industry, lessening the power of unions, and the offshoring of American jobs) has been a huge failure -- resulting in a big recession, the loss of millions of jobs, the suppression of worker wages, and the biggest gap between the rich and the rest of America since before the Great Depression.
But the foreign policy the GOP is trying to scare Americans into supporting won't work any better than their economic policy did. Sending troops to fight in the Middle East will do nothing to stop terrorism -- even if they could defeat ISIS. ISIS, al-Queda, and other terrorist groups don't need to control any country to be able to carry out terrorist acts. All we can do by fighting over there (in an Arab religious civil war) is to create new terrorist sympathizers by killing innocent civilians.
The Republicans know this. They are just hoping you don't know it, and that they can convince you to vote for them. Don't fall for it.
