The difference between terrorism and ‘terrorism-related’ crimes

Are we safer yet?

One of the lines in the president’s revised travel ban justifies the ban as follows: “Since 2001, hundreds of persons born abroad have been convicted of terrorism-related crimes in the United States.”

And I said, “Wow – hundreds?” I remember some pretty bad stuff – but hundreds of terrorism-related crimes?

Related: Trump’s second attempt shows first travel ban was ‘indefensible’

So I looked it up. It turns out that the term “terrorism-related” can mean a lot of things. Like the three people arrested in New Jersey on a tip that they were trying to buy a grenade launcher, when it actually turned out they were smuggling Kellogg’s cereal. Terrorism-related — but not terrorism.

Now I know statistics are out of style –- but check this one out from CBS Evening News’ Scott Pelley: A study by Fordham University of School of Law says 78 percent of ISIS-related prosecutions in the US involve American citizens. And 53 percent of Al-Qaeda-related cases involved people born in the US.

And not only that – according to Slate.com, you have at least 22 fatal terror attacks by US citizens who are playing out their white supremacy fantasies. Whereas the number of terror attacks by people from the travel-ban countries: zero!

So does this mean the travel ban is misguided? Well, my policy is to cut some slack in the first 100 days, so I’m going to tell myself that the president is actually outsmarting the terrorists here — by reasoning that they’re going to look at those statistics and try to surprise us by sneaking in from the countries we’d least suspect.

We’ll see.

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