

President Obama talks with Saudi King Abdullah from the Oval Office on Sept. 10, 2014. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

On Wednesday evening, President Obama will make a prime-time speech from the White House. The speech will deal with the Islamic State, the militant group that has seized large swaths of Syria and Iraq. There is speculation that Obama will announce a significantly broadened U.S. offensive against the group — perhaps even targeting it inside Syria — with or without congressional approval.

Many Americans would probably support such a plan. On Tuesday, The Post and ABC News released poll data that showed that the majority of Americans support U.S. strikes against the Islamic State in Syria. Fifty-two percent felt that Obama had been "too cautious" in dealing with the Islamic State, and 90 percent felt that the group was a "somewhat serious" or "very serious" threat to the United States.

These results aren't anomalous. A CNN/ORC International poll found support for expanding strikes against the Islamic State, with 90 percent viewing the group as a serious threat.

All in all, Americans seem to be very scared of the Islamic State right now and want action taken.

What's really remarkable is how fast this fear has developed. Just a few months ago, the Islamic State was virtually unknown — Google Trends show that it was only in June, three months ago, that searches for the group's best-known acronym, ISIS, skyrocketed.

By coincidence, prompted by concerns about a recently announced branch of al-Qaeda in South Asia, the Pew Research Center published a chart on Wednesday that showed global views about Islamist extremism last year, before the Islamic State's rise. It makes for useful reading ahead of Wednesday's speech: A relatively low 56 percent of Americans viewed Islamist extremism as a "major threat" to the United States in 2013, according to the poll.

That's not a small number, sure, but the figure would include threats from all manner of Islamist extremist groups, including al-Qaeda, a group that has planned and carried out attacks on U.S. soil. What's more, it's noticeably lower than in a number of countries: Italy, France, Lebanon and India topped that chart, while the United States sat just one point behind South Korea and one point ahead of Britain — a country facing its own reckoning with the Islamic State and extremism.

The Islamic State's rise has appeared meteoric, but does it actually pose a direct threat to the United States? The relative ease with which the group was able to take over large chunks of Syria and Iraq is certainly worrying, and its presence is clearly not in the best interests of the United States, but it doesn't necessarily mean a direct threat to the U.S. homeland. Right now, the one terrorist attack in the Western world being linked to the group — a deadly shooting at a Jewish museum in Brussels last year — is said to have come from an isolated, troubled French Islamic State member.

The U.S. government seems to be sending some mixed messages. In an interview with NBC News last week, Obama said there was no “immediate intelligence” indicating a threat to the United States by the Islamic State. During the same interview, however, he said the group itself was "a serious threat."

Perhaps the mixed messages are a reflection of the Islamic State itself. Although the group's immediate strategy appears focused on Syria and Iraq, its propaganda has boasted of broader targets — one Islamic State member told Vice News that his group will raise the Islamic State flag over the White House, for example. It is presenting itself as an existential threat to the United States, even if it is not willing or able to plan any immediate attacks.

After videos showing the brutal murder of two American journalists caused a sensation around the world, many in the West wondered what strategy lay behind the barbaric, apparently irrational killings. The most obvious answer was that it would terrify Americans, and if that was the plan, it's clearly worked. And if the broader plan was to draw a frightened United States further into a fight with the Islamic State, that seems to have worked, too.