What do we have to fear?

• Author: Lueders, Bill
• Position: SMOKING GUN - Brief article

To hear the Republican contenders for President tell it, Americans ought to be quaking in their boots over the threat of, all together now, "radical Islamic terrorism."

"America is at war," was Senator Ted Cruz's opening comment at one debate. "If I am elected President, we will hunt down and kill the terrorists. We will utterly destroy ISIS."

"This is a clash of civilizations," Senator Marco Rubio exclaimed on a Sunday talk show. "There is no middle ground on this. Either they win or we win."

Donald Trump, besides vowing to keep all Muslims from entering the country, said in a debate in February that he would "bring back waterboarding, and ... a hell of a lot worse."

But how much of a threat does jihadist terrorism really pose? Some numbers help put things into perspective.

In the 2016 book United States of Jihad, CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen reports that there have been 72 known terrorist plots in the United States by jihadist...