Poll: Biden's Afghanistan Surrender Heightened Americans' Greatest Fear
President Joe Biden quickly turned the war in Afghanistan into a military defeat and a humanitarian crisis — but the American people seem most afraid it could spur on the next national security disaster.
Biden’s ill-conceived and poorly executed withdrawal of U.S. forces has already caused collateral damage after he decided to abandon American citizens and a cache of U.S. military equipment into the waiting hands of the Taliban.
But aside from these immediate crises, respondents to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday feel the worst may be yet to come.
When asked to choose from a list of 10 scenarios considered to be a “critical threat,” four of the top five selections were related to national security, a notable trend given that the poll was taken between Aug. 28 and 31 and coincided with the waning days of the withdrawal and evacuation effort.
While 71 percent of respondents chose cyber security as their top “critical threat” — likely based on recent reports of cyberattacks from America’s adversaries who will now be emboldened by America’s recent surrender — the rest dealt directly with the dangers the war in Afghanistan was waged to prevent.
With the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan and the 20-year anniversary of 9/11 looming large, 67 percent of respondents feared terror attacks in the homeland while 66 percent thought “ISIS and Islamic groups in foreign countries” were a danger. Another 61 percent were worried about “Islamic extremism.”
While it’s possible these concerns would have been on Americans’ minds anyway, it’s telling considering 72 percent of the 1,997 registered voters polled believed the troop withdrawal was either going “Not too well” or “Not well at all” even as the effort was still underway at the time of the polling.
It’s possible they were conscious of the news coming out of Afghanistan at that time, including the deadly terrorist attack at the airport in Kabul that killed 13 U.S. service members and hundreds of others that many blamed squarely on the president.
“Joe Biden has blood on his hands,” Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York tweeted the day of the attack on Aug. 26. “The buck stops with the President of the United States. This horrific national security and humanitarian disaster is solely the result of Joe Biden’s weak and incompetent leadership.”
“He is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.”
Joe Biden has blood on his hands.
The buck stops with the President of the United States.
This horrific national security and humanitarian disaster is solely the result of Joe Biden’s weak and incompetent leadership. He is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) August 26, 2021
Notably, far down on the same list of threats were pet causes of the left like “Racial inequality” at 38 percet and “Income inequality” at 29 percent, hinting at the influence Biden’s incompetence had on refocusing the American people squarely on the dangers his policies have created rather than the soft domestic policies Democrats favor.
The poll also found Biden had a 47 percent overall approval rating with 49 percent disapproval despite more than a year of fawning media coverage that propped him up well ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
It’s increasingly becoming impossible for the media to hide Biden’s massive foreign policy blunder, and the American people instinctively know what’s at stake when they see Afghanistan fall back to the Taliban.
While the terrorist organization stages a victory parade using the millions of dollars of U.S. military equipment left behind, the rest of the world is watching.
Biden made the U.S. look weak and untrustworthy, and there will be little incentive for any one of America’s enemies to use restraint knowing that those in power don’t have the intestinal fortitude to sustain any kind of military action.
The relative domestic peace we’ve enjoyed these past two decades — thanks to the successful War on Terror waged overseas — is likely about to come to an abrupt end as those same enemies find renewed fortitude.
While the media is slowly beginning to admit to as much, it’s clear voters are acutely aware of what could be on the horizon as Afghanistan was unceremoniously handed back over to our enemies — and thanks to Biden, it was in a neatly-packaged parting gift including the weapons to do it.
The Politico/Morning Consult poll reported a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points.
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