Public Opinion on Iraq
To follow up on Ivo's post, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has a new poll out today. Not surprisingly with more than 1,700 U.S. soliders killed in Iraq, public opinion continues to sour. Support for withdrawing immediately stands at 46 percent, up from 36 percent last October.
Does this mean that the White House is now likely to face concerted public pressure to withdraw? Probably not. In the poll's most telling poll result, only 35 percent of Americans think that Iraq is becoming another Vietnam. That's up only 10 percentage points from April 2004. And 47 percent think that the United States will achieve its goals in Iraq. In short, the Bush White House still has a political cushion to work with.
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Aren't you leaving out the insurgents? They don't seem to be cooperating on the cushion project.
June 13, 2005 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the cost of the war will eventually raise the level of discontent. At some point, American taxpayers will start asking this administration whether the half a trillion dollars it spent trying to democratize Iraq might better have been spent helping to preserve their Social Security benefits.
June 13, 2005 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Half empty?
Half full?
Either way, the glass has a hole in it - a big one. It is important if not a bit discomfiting to remember that public opinion has reached its "tipping point" on Iraq and that it has done so without "any concerted opposition" to date.
As Daniel Ellsberg put it, I would say that many, I could say thousands, but it's really hundreds of thousands, and when we include the Vietnamese, millions, have died in the last century because American politicians were unwilling to be called names. They were unwilling to face, however invalid, however ridiculous, the charge that they were weak, unmanly, cowardly, defeatist, losers, and whatnot.
We need a few George Galloways, Walter Joneses(!!!), Frank Churches, Wayne Morses, Bobby Kennedy's, Gene McCarthy's...
and fewer Dianne Feinsteins and Joe Liebermans
June 13, 2005 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
The public is discontented with the war for obvious reasons. No surprises there, not for me anyways. The public's not apt to take it out on the President, though, unless the Dems can make a public case that they'd do a better job from this point forward (there's a very strong case to be made on this point, but alas we Demwonks seem to be the only ones who have heard it). Pessimism about the war will be transferred to whomever is in charge of the war, until someone offers a reasonable hope for relief.
I think the public's confusion on how well the war is working out is mostly due to too little useful news on the war, and the segmentation of the political audience: the FOX/Limbaugh crowd vs. the nightly news watchers vs. the Air America listeners. We don't agree on much these days.
I'd be very interested to see a cross-section of the 47% who think we will achieve our goals in Iraq; either they watch too much FOX News or they have a much lower standard than most when it comes to setting our goals. If 'our goals" was the goals the Administration set out for themselves at the beginning - a peaceful, secular, free-market Iraq becoming our newest bulwark in the Middle East - that's long been chucked in the wastebasket.
June 13, 2005 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sadly, most Americans don't even seem to know what Vietnam was, ie, the last big American defeat (big as opposed to the small defeats: Lebanon, Somalia). Most Americans are in complete denial of the fact that the world's sole superpower (how often have we had to hear that hollow phrase?) is getting its butt kicked bigtime in full view of everyone. At the end of the day, what will sting the most is the humiliation. The world's sole superpower can't control the road between the Green Zone and the airport. (My uncle who was in Saigon told me it was quite a fun place to be. Meanwhile, there's not a single spot in Iraq an American can walk safely.) That says it all. Trust me, the rest of the world is looking on, and smiling. The emperor has no clothes. Bush Senior built the myth of the invincible superpower; Bush Junior punctured it with the spectacle of an American military completely out of its depth. Call it a family thing.
June 13, 2005 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
47 percent think that the United States will achieve its goals in Iraq.
Well, Bush did get reelected, after all. So in a sense, you could argue that the primary goal in Iraq has already been achieved.
June 13, 2005 10:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is important that the issue of Iraq does not exist as an isolated one, in its own vacuum. It should constantly be tied to larger issues, not only foreign policy matters and national security, but to common domestic matters such as the deficit, health care, the Bush tax cuts, etc.
Social security is an apt one. So a better poll question, more to the point would be:
June 13, 2005 11:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
At this point, we know that our troops will be there for at least another year, likely much longer. The probability of more bad news is much higher than the probability of a sudden positive change. Bush has not succeeded in articulating sensible exit criteria because he never thought they'd be needed. I'd say W has become a Republican version of Lyndon Johnson.
Johnson, in other ways a much better, much more courageous president than W, split his party and ushered in a decade of serious social unrest. That may be the sort of "tipping point" we're seeing now.
June 14, 2005 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Iraq is not a new Vietnam - it is the new Afghanistan.
June 14, 2005 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I may be pointing out the obvious here, but I think a better gauge of the public opinion on the Iraqi war is the recruiting struggles our services have had in the last year or so. Granted, as of the last 5 months has it been a noticeable issue in the press.
I am and have been skeptical of the war 'effort' from the get-go, but I take public opinion polls with a grain of salt. I think that one inherent problem in the news today, is the media outlets attempting to create news by conducting a poll, or spotlighting one. Mr. Lindsay points out that this polling indicates that the Bush Administration still has a political 'cushion' to work with. Well sure they do, but do they care? Absolutely not. If you listen closely enough, the "We must stay the course"-mantra is the WH strategists way of telling the public to stop wasting any energy questioning their policy.
Public opinion and poll numbers on Iraq can swing dramatically overnight. Let's stop wasting energy reading into the numbers and speculating that maybe the time has come where President Bush's 'base' has begun to abandon his policy. The 'cushion' of the WH would pop if we simply, as people who care, pressure (in many of the same tactics the minstrels of mullah Dobson use against media groups) the print media into mounting a campaign of questioning of the lower officials. The top officials at the WH are surely prepared to handle these questions. But mid-level diplomats will crack after their intial force-fed-then-regurgitated response. Forget the numbers, it is like watching a pot of water boil. Let's take action and hold the people accountable who are supposed to hold our government accountable by simply asking the hard questions.
June 15, 2005 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink