The Foriegn Policy Conundrum

Most American's rarely think about foreign policy, not opinion polls suggest do they much care. A recent Pew Research poll showed "about half of Americans (51%) say the United States does too much in helping solve world problems".
 And "52% say the United States 'should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own'. Just 38% disagree with the statement. This is the most lopsided balance in favor of the U.S. 'minding its own business' in the nearly 50-year history of the measure".

Yet at the same time the President is being widely criticized for his handling of foreign policy: "By a 56% to 34% margin more disapprove than approve of his handling of foreign policy. The public also disapproves of his handling of Syria, Iran, China and Afghanistan by wide margins". Yet most politicians (McCain being the prime example) have been arguing that the US didn't intervene robustly enough. Assuming that they reflect a substantial swath of public opinion (not necessarily a good assumption, admittedly), what explains a simultaneous lack of interest in intervening and class for greater intervention?

One possible explanation is this: the only news that makes it though the US new 'abroad filter' is really really bad news; everyone wants it just to go away. And if it doesn't it most be the President's fault. And the only cure for a problem is action, generally offensive, rather than laissez faire and defense.

But as I have argued elsewhere here, the problem isn't going to be fixed by 'crushing' those responsible. (The language Western leaders have been using post Charlie Hebdo is itself increasingly inflammatory and adversarial, unlikely to persuade violent extremists to stand down or those who support them by tacit approval of their actions take a more outspoken stand).  The problem is rooted in 70 years of Western support of oppressive regimes combined with a lack of economic development and opportunity, which has found its outlet through the institution of an organized religion.   

President Obama is right that 'crushing' AQAP or ISIL (or even Boko Haram whose atrocities are orders of magnitude greater) doesn't do anything but put a temporary lid on a pressure cooker; which will eventually explode again as long as the heat that keeps it on the boil isn't turned off.  While drone strikes appear a simple and low cost - at least in US lives - solution, it takes only a modicum of imagination to realize that living in a region where a constant unseen threat that may at any moment reign fire from 26,000ft often killing as many non-terrorists as terrorists is unlikely to lower the temperature. Nor is meddling to prop up Yemen's embattled and now ex- president Abed Rabbo Hadi, or Nouri Al Makili's sectarian administration, or Hamid Karzai, someone the US effectively installed as president.
 

What the best answer is, I don't know. But one think of which I am quite sure; paternalistic mostly self-interested militaristic melding in other countries' affairs is only going to make matters worse. Only by helping the people from whom the extremists recruit see a path to prosperity and democratic self determination will the the violence abate.