Nuclear Terrorism, Polling data, Americans and terrorism

Americans No Longer See Terrorism as Threat

By Dr. Paul L. Williams Tuesday, July 28, 2009
-The Last Crusade

If you can’t beat them…

Forget 9/11.
Forget the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Forget the fatwahs of al Qaeda and its sister organizations.
Forget the scores of attacks that have occurred or been thwarted on American soil during the past eight years.

Americans, according to a Gallup poll, are less concerned about terrorism than at any point since August 2004 – with only 36% saying they are very or somewhat worried that they or a family member will become a victim of a terrorist attack.

Americans’ collective level of worry about terrorism is the lowest recorded since August 2004 (34%) and down sharply from the all-time high of 59% recorded in October 2001, just after the Sept. 11 attacks. 30% now say they are not too worried about the threat of another terrorist attack and 34% say they are not at all worried.

In a separate Gallup Poll, a scant 1% of the Americans surveyed mentioned terrorism as the most important problem facing the United States.

Although President Obama, apart from Bubba Bill Clinton, is the only U.S. Commander-in-Chief never to serve in the Army, 73% of Americans say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the Obama Administration and the Democrat majority in the House and Senate to protect them from future acts of terrorism — unchanged from 2006.

Two-thirds of the liberals in America, according to a recent ABC poll, maintain that Islam is a peaceful religion that poses no threat to the country. Sixty-two percent of the registered Democrats and Independents concur.

Islam, the ABC pollsters discovered, is more apt to be seen unfavorably by less-educated adults, Southerners and senior citizens than by their counterparts. Compared with the ABC poll of October 2001, unfavorable views of Islam have increased by 23 points among senior citizens, 19 points among conservatives, 18 points among Republicans and 12 points among Southerners. There’s one group – liberals – among whom unfavorable views of Islam have declined, by 11 points.

These findings are supported by the collapse of the market for books dealing with terrorism. Harry Crocker of Regnery, the publisher of such works as Stealth Jihad by Robert Spencer and America Alone by Mark Steyn, says that books on terrorism no longer sell well.

The new attitude of the American people goes a long way to explain the failure to drum up a substantial number of protestors to decry the convention of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic group with espouses terror attacks against Israel and the United States, at the Oak Lawn Hilton Hotel on the outskirts of Chicago. The subject of the gathering was “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Capitalism.â€