The Troops’ Support
Uncategorized - - Posted on January, 3 at 8:43 am by Eric Martin
Via the Armchair Generalist, a new poll out from the Military Times has some interesting indications about the levels of support for the Iraq war amongst America’s soldiers:
It’s often written or said in the media that, despite public opposition to the Iraq war here at home, military personnel strongly back President Bush’s handling of the conflict. But a poll for the Military Times newspapers, released Friday, shows that more troops disapprove of the president’s handling of the war than approve of it. [...]
Barely one in three service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, according to the new poll for the four papers (Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Times). In another startling finding, only 41% now feel it was the right idea to go to war in Iraq in the first place.
And the number who feel success there is likely has shrunk from 83% in 2004 to about 50% today. A surprising 13% say there should be no U.S. troops in Iraq at all. [...]
“While President Bush always portrays the war in Iraq as part of the larger war on terrorism, many in the military are not convinced,” the Military Times reported. “The respondents were split evenly - 47 percent both ways - on whether the Iraq war is part of the war on terrorism. The rest had no opinion.”
Those numbers are near jaw dropping. Interestingly, though, the poll’s respondents aren’t exactly what you would call a group of Bush-bashing liberals. For example, some other telling responses:
This comes even though only about one in ten called their overall political views “liberal.”
…Among the respondents, two in three have deployed at least once to Iraq or Afghanistan. [...]
While approval of Bush’s handling of the war has plunged, approval for his overall performance as president remains at 52%.
The margin of error for the poll is +/- 3%. If the actual sentiment in the armed forces is anywhere within earshot of that margin, one has to wonder what the appetite exists for the long term escalation plan Bush seems poised to unveil.
Posted in Uncategorized |
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:21 am
The BBC has a leak from (yet another) “senior administration source” who says Bush’s coming speech will “reveal a plan to send more US troops to Iraq to focus on ways of bringing greater security, rather than training Iraqi forces”.
There’s a good chance that funding for this increase could be blocked in Congress, in which case Bush & Co can point the finger of blame at the Dems (just when they were about to conclusively “win” the war, once and for all). Let’s hope Pelosi has some balls.
January 3rd, 2007 at 10:58 am
I read on another blog that a typical reader of the Military Times is more likely to be an officer than your ordinary national guard foot soldier, which makes the poll results even more damning. Officers are presumably in a more informed position than most of us to know the real prospects of achieving any significant military objectives in Iraq.
There are signs of chaos and a breakdown in the chain of command in the conflicting announcements coming out of the Bush administration and the CoW military. Only a few days ago we were told that a whole freakin’ division was going to be charged with training duties, now suddenly training’s not the main game at all, it’s improving security.
I suspect the truth is that the challenges facing the occupation are ones which the CoW forces are poorly equipped to cope with. They have neither the training nor the equipment to be peace-keepers in a hot civil war; their mission is ill-defined; and their (understandable) lack of personal commitment to an uncertain cause means they are reluctant to risk casualties.
Apologies again to Tim, but the similarities to Vietnam are strong.
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:39 am
I think “improving security” is code for eliminating Moqtada al-Sadr.
I further think that the US and/or al-Maliki deliberated framed al-Sadr for the barbaric lynching of Saddam on a holy day (see my blog for the rationales).
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Here’s another interesting poll which was (stun, shock) ignored by the straaayn meeja:
Iraq poll: U.S. troops departure is asset
BAGHDAD, Dec. 29 (UPI) — About 90 percent of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before the U.S.-led invasion than it is today, according to a new ICRSS poll.
The findings emerged after house-to-house interviews conducted by the ICRSS during the third week of November. About 2,000 people from Baghdad (82 percent), Anbar and Najaf (9 percent each) were randomly asked to express their opinion. Twenty-four percent of the respondents were women.
Only five percent of those questioned said Iraq is better today than in 2003. While 89 percent of the people said the political situation had deteriorated, 79 percent saw a decline in the economic situation; 12 percent felt things had improved and 9 percent said there was no change. Predictably, 95 percent felt the security situation was worse than before.
The results of the poll conducted by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies and shared with the Gulf Research Center, has a margin error of +/- 3.1 percent….
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20061229-101021-1168r
Given those “firm” results, is it really that hard to imagine that the occupation troops aren’t welcome?
January 3rd, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Bet Tim Blair’s favourite pet soldier 185600 is not one the majority found in the survey above.
But GI Joe still knows what the score is…