The Syrians and the Kurdish see these articles translated online. They may conclude that America, or at least certain parts of America are far more dangerous than their Middle Eastern neighborhoods.
A couple of years ago, I worked in DC, and would have weekends free. Naturally, I went through the normal list of things (Gettysburg, Mount Vernon, Richmond, etc). One day in the office, I remarked that I hadn’t been to Baltimore and was thinking of going over. One of the guys knew Baltimore fairly well. He printed out a map of the downtown region, and then drew a 5,000 ft by 5,000 ft square and then said that was the ‘safe zone’...don’t venture outside of the zone. I kinda laughed and a second guy in the office voiced the same idea for Baltimore. It’s just not a place to go unless you want to see an O’s game or stay at a hotel at the inner harbor area.
The blunt truth is....if we took the top 100 metropolitan areas of the US, and applied the ‘safe zone’ concept...we might all be shocked at just how dangerous that the nation has become. I grew in Alabama in the 1970s and considered Birmingham at that point in time to be fairly safe. Today? Other than the airport and maybe two small zones....the bulk of Birmingham is unsafe. Same for Memphis. Same for Atlanta. For that matter, I can’t think of any city over 250,000 in population that is entirely safe to venture into.