After nearly a year, Americans are voting thumbs down on Obama’s handling of the war on terror:
Belief that the bad guys are winning the War on Terror is now at its highest level in over two years, and nearly half of U.S. voters say America is not safer than it was before 9/11. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30% of voters think the terrorists are winning the War on Terror. That’s the first time the number holding that pessimistic view has reached 30% since October 2007. . . Just 27% now say that the United States is safer today than it was before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. However, 47% say it is not, That latter figure marks a nine-point jump from earlier in the month and is the highest negative finding on the question since Rasmussen Reports began surveying on it in 2002.
Try as he might to turn away from the Bush-era policies and downgrade the war on terror, Obama finds that the world does not cooperate. Terrorists persist in striking us, detainees released from Guantanamo return to the business of trying to kill Americans, and hamstringing our intelligence agencies makes for less effective intelligence gathering. Moreover, his approach — consisting of much wishful thinking (e.g., closing Guantanamo will quell the terrorists’ hatred), a determination to shift to a criminal-justice model, and a rejection of the robust policies able to extract life-saving information from terrorists — has not instilled confidence in the American people.
Plainly, Obama would rather be doing other things (taking over the health-care sector of the economy and regulating carbon emissions, to name two) but he cannot escape a fundamental reality: we are at war and his presidency will fail, horribly so, if he does not make his first priority the defense of Americans against Islamic terrorists. If he is looking to pivot and arrest the slide in his political fortunes next year, he should begin by a comprehensive rethinking of the anti-terror policies that have caused the public to lose faith in him. His decision on Afghanistan, as halting and half-hearted as it was, should be instructive. When the president commits to a war, allocates appropriate resources, and utilizes the advice of military experts rather than political hacks, the public responds favorably. It is a lesson worth applying more broadly — we hope before the next detonator works as planned or the passengers on the next airplane targeted by terror are sleeping rather than keeping watch.