Support for Iraq War at All Time Low
CNN reports that a recently conducted poll has found that support for the war in Iraq is at an all time low:
the latest CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll released Tuesday, 69 percent of those polled believe things are going badly in Iraq. Seventeen percent think the situation is improving.
Thirty percent of Americans polled say they favor the war, the lowest level of support on record. Two-thirds are opposed.
But there is more – not only are Americans as a whole more negative about the war, support for the war among Republicans is dropping as well:
Anti-war sentiment among Republican poll respondents has suddenly increased with 38 percent of Republicans now saying they oppose the war.
Moreover, 63 percent of Americans are ready to withdraw at least some troops from Iraq. Forty-two percent of Republicans agree.
Although those numbers speak in the advantage of the Democrats, there is a ‘but’: 54% believe that the war in Iraq is not morally justified. That is, of course, a majority, but it is not an overwhelming majority. It seems to me that Democrats are wise not to talk about the moral aspect of the war too much, but to, instead, focus on how badly the war has been handled and how much it has increased extremism, etc. Focus not on the moral aspects of the war, focus on the pragmatical aspects of the war, on how it has hurt American interests (in the region) etc.
Read more here.
opinions powered by SendLove.to
6 Responses to “Support for Iraq War at All Time Low”
It may be “wise” not to talk about the moral aspects of the war, but it doesn’t bode well for the collective security of the world if America doesn’t denounce preemptive war.
I think Democrats HAVE focused on the strategic problems of the war and not the moral ones. Obama has made the point since 2002 that the war diverts resources from Afghanistan and merely ratchets up Islamic support for jihadism. The only people I’ve heard make purely moral cases against the war are non-explicitly-partisan activists and Dennis Kucinich.
There’s nothing wrong with it whatsoever in theory, nor in practice if the theory is followed correctly. If we know we’re about to be attacked, we have every right and it can also be argued, if we know, then we have the duty (to prevent or reduce harm to ourselves), to strike first.
I’d re-quote LeMay: If we truly knew that Japan was going to strike Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, we would and should not only bomb the shit out of the Japanese forces headed to Pearl Harbor, but also the forces headed to the Philippines and targets on the Japanese mainland itself if befitting. We would and should bomb the shit out of them.
The overwhelming fallacy of using World War II analogies to compare to our current situation, is that Japan is a sovereign nation, with a leader who could stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier and surrender to us. 9/11 was by definition a massive case of arson perpetrated by criminals. There was no sovereign nation to attack, no emperor to surrender. Substituting Saddam Hussein for the criminal mastermind bin Laden, who roams free to this day, did nothing to bring the criminals to justice, and our “policy” of preemptive war will never succeed against criminal acts like arson.
So is Iraq.
The issue here is whether or not the war with Iraq (against the Hussein government) was correct. I and other Americans kept Hussein and Iraq fully separate from al-Qaeda residing in Afghanistan (and other places).
If we knew Iraq was planning to attack us (and in the modern world, any Iraqi battle groups would be on the television days before they could arrive within carrier aircraft or ship-based missile striking distance of the USA), of course we’d attack those groups and probably some government sites in Iraq itself for good measure. We obviously would not be obliged to wait first for us to be struck before we were to act.
Our basis for attacking Iraq was not that we knew they were going to attack us.
We instead said that we should attack Iraq because we *think* they have weapons we don’t want them to have, and we *think* they might use these weapons to attack us.
It’s pretty much an argument we could use to invade any industrialized country in the world.