15 Years After 9/11, Americans Don't Feel Safe

Today marks 15 years since the 9/11 attacks, and memorials will be held around the country in remembrance of the nearly 3,000 lives lost in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania that day. Arriving in time for the anniversary are a pair of polls that show that Americans are increasingly concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

According to a CNN/ORC poll (PDF) released on Friday, half of Americans expressed the feeling that an act of terrorism during the days surrounding Sept. 11 this year is "very" or "somewhat" likely. Five years ago, 39 percent of Americans had the same premonition.

In the last five years, there have been a number of large-scale terrorist attacks both in the United States and internationally, many of which are tied to the rise of ISIS. Within the U.S., the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, San Benardino shooting last year and the Pulse nightclub massacre earlier this summer were mass-casualty events in the past half decade that increased Americans' sense of unease. In Europe within the last 12 months, terrorists struck in series of coordinated attacks in Paris, airport bombings in Brussels and a truck attack at a Bastille Day event in Nice.

These new attacks are also contributing to the increasing sense of fear and anger Americans feel when reflecting on 9/11, the CNN/ORC polls finds. Forty percent of Americans said they felt fear and around three-quarters anger when looking back to 9/11. Five years ago, those numbers stood at 62 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

A Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday paints a similar picture. Forty percent of Americans says that the ability of terrorists to strike in the United States is greater than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, and 31 percent believes terrorists' ability to launch an attack are about the same.

In Pew's numbers, there is also a sharp partisan divide in terms of how Americans feel about the liklihood of a major terrorist attack, reflecting an increasingly polarized political landscape during an election year.

Nearly 60 percent of Republicans consider the ability of terrorists to attack as greater than at the time of 9/11, Pew finds, while 34 percent of independents and 31 percent of Democrats felt the same.

"Opinions about terrorists' capabilities to attack the U.S. have long been divided along partisan lines," the center writes. "During George W. Bush's presidency, Democrats were often more likely than Republicans to say the ability to terrorists to launch a major strike was greater than at the time of 9/11, while the reverse has been true during Barack Obama's administration."

"But this marks the first time in the past 14 years that a majority in either party has expressed this view," the report continues.

From Discovery News