Obama & Islamic Terrorism — Minimizing the Threat, He Dishonors American Sacrifice
Leftist activists have long argued that the terror threat is ‘overblown,’ and the president himself now seems to agree. The very idea dishonors American sacrifice overseas.
You may not be aware of this, but Islamic terrorism is no big deal. Really, it’s not. In June, a much-ballyhooed report from the New America Foundation declared that since 9/11, right-wing terrorists have killed more people on U.S. soil than have Islamic terrorists.
The New York Times, NPR, and other left-wing outlets jumped on the report, all essentially relaying one message: There’s an “acceptance” of the idea that the “threat from jihadi terrorism in the United States has been overblown.”
Just last week, President Obama himself echoed the same idea. After a deranged, gay, black racist murdered two people on live television, Obama decried gun violence and then said, “What we know is that the number of people who die from gun-related incidents around this country dwarfs any deaths that happen through terrorism.”
Again, the message is clear: America worries too much about terrorism and not enough about the left-wing cause célèbre of the moment, be it the threat of right-wing terror or gun violence more generally.
While it’s easy enough to discredit the New America Foundation’s report — how convenient to begin the tally after the deadliest foreign attack on American shores in history — Obama’s statement is both true and extraordinarily misleading. Yes, it’s true that very few Americans have died here at home at the hands of terrorists since 9/11. Yes, it’s true that more Americans die from “gun-related incidents” in this country than die from terrorist violence.
But in these tallies, isn’t the New American Foundation forgetting a key American population? Isn’t the commander-in-chief? America has been relatively safe since 9/11 because Americans have died by the thousands fighting terrorists overseas. In Iraq, 4,492 American service members fell. In Afghanistan, the toll is 2,363 — and rising.
More than 52,000 other Americans have been wounded in action, and almost 1 million have filed disability claims involving everything from traumatic brain injury to post-traumatic stress disorder. More than 2 million Americans have left their homes to deploy overseas since 9/11, causing immense stress and disruption to service members and their families.
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