Will Islamic State’s Rise Turn U.S. Public Opinion?
People gathered outside of the White House in June to protest against renewed U.S. involvement in Iraq. Associated Press Here in the nation’s capital, the question of the moment is whether the rise of the Islamic State extremist group has changed President Barack Obama ‘s reluctance to re-engage in Iraq militarily, or to really intervene for the first time in Syria—and that certainly is an important question. But equally important and far less discussed is this: Has the specter of a new, different and frightening kind of Islamic extremism changed the American public’s deep reluctance to engage anew in the Middle East? Privately, some administration officials think it probably will. But it is hard to tell that yet from either public polling data, which is sparse in August, or the sketchy discourse in the midterm elections, which tends to reflect the national conversation as much as shape it. What […]