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 The nation is on edge in the wake of brutal beheadings of journalists by Islamic extremists — with more Americans saying the United States is less safe now than at any point since 9/11, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll shows. 
 
 The exclusive poll reveals that 47% of Americans believe the country is less safe now than before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. That’s a significant increase from even a year after the twin towers fell when in September 2002 just 20% of the country said the nation was less safe. The level of fear across America also is up substantially from last year when 28% felt the same way. 
 
 In fact, just 26% of Americans now feel the nation is safer than before 9/11. 
 
 The numbers are a backdrop for the primetime speech President Obama will deliver on Wednesday night outlining his plan to combat the terrorist group ISIS, which has taken over parts of Iraq and Syria, beheaded two American journalists, distributed images of the killings in via gruesome videos, and has launched a social media campaign to extend its reach. 
 
 Read the full poll here. 
 
 “A very war-weary country … seems to have woken up to the real threat that ISIS may present,” says Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart and his colleagues at Hart Research. 
 
 “The beheadings are so chilling to the American public,” added Hart. “The only things I think of equal impact are the self-immolations back in Vietnam.” 
 
 The new poll also found that more than six in 10 respondents believe that taking military action against the Islamic militant group ISIS is in the nation’s interest. 
 
 And a whopping 94 percent of Americans say they have heard about the news of the beheaded journalists – higher than any other news event the NBC/WSJ poll has measured over the past five years. 
 
 That includes the 2011 debt-ceiling debate (77 percent), the 2012 health-care decision by the U.S. Supreme Court (78 percent), Syria’s reported use of chemical weapons in 2013 (79 percent) and this year’s botched execution in Oklahoma (68 percent). ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 A near-majority of Americans say the United States should become less active in world affairs, a dramatic change from the post-9/11 national environment and one that comes as President Barack Obama tries to juggle crises in the Middle East and the Ukraine. 
 
 In a new NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll, 47 percent of respondents said the U.S. should dial down its activity in foreign affairs, versus 19 percent who said the country should be more active around the globe. Three in ten respondents said the current level is correct. 
 
 That represents a major flip in how Americans view world affairs since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. At that time, nearly 4 in ten Americans said they wanted to see more engagement around the world, and just 14 percent said the nation should be less active. 
 
 Comparable studies in the mid-1990s found that about a third of Americans believed the U.S. should reduce its foreign policy footprint. 
 
 Obama –whose rise to the presidency was built partially around his opposition to the Iraq War – is definitely cognizant of Americans’ aversion to too much intervention abroad. As recently as Tuesday, he defended his foreign policy strategy -- with a nod to the conflict that galvanized support for him as a candidate in 2007 and 2008. 
 
 “For some reason, many who were proponents of what I consider to be a disastrous decision to go into Iraq haven’t really learned the lesson of the last decade, and they keep on just playing the same note over and over again,” he said, adding that “my job as Commander-in-Chief is to look at what is it that is going to advance our security interests over the long term, to keep our military in reserve for where we absolutely need it.” 
 
 Despite Obama’s decisions so far towards relatively minimized U.S. presences in Ukraine and Syria, voters are still displeased with his foreign policy strategy at record levels. 
 
 Only 38 percent of those polls said they approve of the job Obama is doing handling foreign policy, an all-time low in his presidency. Fifty-three percent disapprove and nine percent say they aren’t sure.
– Some six in 10 Americans say they would support a strike against ISIS, as President Obama appears to be moving toward such a hit. The figure comes from an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that also finds Americans feeling unsafe: Some 47% of the country now feels the US is less secure than it was before the 9/11 attacks. Just a year after those attacks, NBC notes, only 20% shared that feeling; last year, it was 28%. One news item fueling the fear: US journalists' beheadings, which 94% of Americans are aware of. That's the highest level of awareness of any story in the past five years, according to the poll. A day before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Obama is preparing for a tough speech. Tonight in prime time, he'll discuss the US plan against the group, an initiative that will start small and expand; eventual airstrikes in Syria are possible, Politico reports, while the AP notes that major troop action on the ground is unlikely. Meanwhile, a generation has come of age as the post-9/11 conflict has continued, the AP notes. In an earlier vision of the future, Iraq was supposed to be fending for itself by this point, with US troops largely leaving Afghanistan combat behind; instead, we're preparing for further action in the region. "The Cold War took 45 years," says a former George W. Bush adviser. "It's harder to see how this ends."