Terror Takes a Back Seat; Americans Safer Now
As Americans debate whether they are better off now than they were four years ago, there is another question with a somewhat easier answer: Are you safer now than you were when President Barack Obama took office?
By most measures, the answer is yes.
More than a decade after terrorists slammed planes into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside, Americans have stopped fretting daily about a possible attack or stockpiling duct tape and water, and the slogs through airport security have become a routine irritation, not a grim foreboding.
While the threat of a terror attack has not disappeared, the combined military, intelligence, diplomatic and financial efforts to hobble al-Qaida and its affiliates have escalated over the past four years and have paid off. Top terror leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are dead and their networks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia disrupted.