Rising energy costs, the subprime mortgage implosion, and other domestic imperatives now monopolize the national conversation. In a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Americans ranked terrorism as the country’s 10th-most important priority—behind healthcare, education, and the federal budget deficit. But even as attentions shift, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become the longest U.S. military engagements in a century, with the exception of Vietnam.
On issues ranging from the war in Afghanistan to Iran to U.S. energy policy, they find worrisome trends. Perhaps nowhere is this truer than with regard to the war in Afghanistan. Eighty percent of the experts say that the United States has focused too much on the war in Iraq and not enough on the war in Afghanistan. A majority, 66 percent, continues to say that the war in Afghanistan is having a positive impact on U.S. national security, but that figure is down 27 points from two years ago. The U.S. government’s efforts to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan have been judged to be below average. Eighty-two percent of the experts say that the threat posed by competition for scarce resources is growing, an increase of 13 percentage points from last year. More than 8 in 10 experts say that the current U.S. policy toward Iran is having a negative impact on national security. A large bipartisan majority agrees that creating peace between Israelis and Palestinians is important to addressing the threat of Islamist terrorism, they grade U.S. efforts at working toward that goal to be just 3.3 on a 10-point scale.
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