A new poll shows that Americans have set limits on their patience on the Iraq War — and limits on ways of getting out of Iraq:
Americans overwhelmingly support congressional action to cap the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and set a timetable to bring them home by the end of next year, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds — tougher action than the non-binding resolution the House of Representatives is to begin debating today.
While six in 10 oppose President Bush’s plan to use more troops to try to stabilize Iraq, a nearly equal number also oppose any effort to cut off funding for those additional forces.
“They’re saying the same thing they said in the 2006 elections — that they are against the current policy and they want something done about it,” says James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.
“They want Congress to debate it; they want Congress to focus on it; they want to bring this war to a close,” says Mark Blumenthal, a former Democratic pollster who is now editor of Pollster.com. “We don’t want to deny our armed services what they need to do their jobs, but we’d like to bring them home.”
The poll also points out another stark fact: just as on so many other policies during the Bush administration, it’s all boiling down to an administration that draws the bulk support from loyal Republicans but not from Americans of the opposition party, or independent voters.
Republicans remain supportive of the war; a majority of them oppose any congressional limits. Still, even among those who back Bush’s troop increase, nearly a third endorse the timetable for pulling out.
The House is to begin three days of debate today on a resolution that vows to “support and protect” U.S. troops and then “disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush … to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.”
With polls such as this one it becomes evident that 2008 could be bad news for some candidates if there is no change in policy or if things get worse…and if they have been backing the existing policy: “Seven of 10 say their representative’s vote on the war will affect their vote in the next congressional election; more than four in 10 call it a major factor. However, nearly two-thirds aren’t sure where their representative stands on the issue.
But there’s some modest good news for Bush: His approval rating is up 5 percent. And so far Americans are not smitten by the performance of Congressional Democrats, the poll notes. “Just 30% approve of the way congressional Democrats are handling Iraq; 27% approve of congressional Republicans.” That can’t be spun as bad or “no big deal” news for the Democrats.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.