"Poll Shows Isolationist Streak in Americans" is the headline over a New York Times article reporting on the results of the latest New York Times CBS News Poll.
The headline is absurd, because the poll doesn't ask respondents if they are isolationist or internationalist/interventionist. It found 70% support for American drone strikes against suspected terrorists in foreign countries, a tactic that a strict isolationist would probably oppose. The "isolationist" headline seems to stem from the response to a question about Syria.
That question was phrased as follows: "Do you think the United States has a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria between government forces and anti-government groups, or doesn't the United States have this responsibility?" Twenty-four percent said America has responsibility, while 62 percent that it does not.
I'd bet that if you phrased the question another way, you could get a different result. You could ask, for example, "President Obama says Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad has killed tens of thousands of people, including civilians, to cling to power against an opposition that says it wants freedom and democracy. The governments of Britain, France, Israel, and America say the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, and the U.S. government says Syria has sponsored international terrorism. Should America do what it can to help the opposition or should it stand idly by while tens of thousands more innocent civilians are slaughtered by the terrorist-sponsoring dictator?"
Smartertimes is not arguing for American military intervention in Syria, and we have no confidence that what comes after Assad will be better. We're just arguing that the way the Times/CBS poll phrased the question tells you more about the Times than about whether the American people are or are not isolationist. The question ignores the fact that the opposition has actually been recognized as a legitimate government in exile by some countries, so that rather than a conflict between "government forces and anti-government groups," the conflict might be more accurately described between two groups that each claim to be the government of Syria, one a terror-sponsoring dictator, the other a mixture of Islamic fundamentalists and advocates of human rights and democracy.