The Troops Speak
The Military Times newspapers have published their annual poll after questioning 6,000 randomly selected active-duty members of the US Armed Forces.
Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly blog summarizes the report for us:
The results ran counter to much of the conventional wisdom—barely one in three service members approve of the way the president is handling the war; a majority believe it was wrong to go into Iraq in the first place; and a plurality reject the notion of sending additional troops into the war.
From The Army Times report on the poll itself:
<!The American military — once a staunch supporter of President Bush and the Iraq war — has grown increasingly pessimistic about chances for victory, according to the 2006 Military Times Poll.
For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president’s handling of the war than approve of it. Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war.
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Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved.
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.
This comes even though only about one in ten called their overall political views “liberal.”
As Greg Sargent at TPMCafe pointed out:
Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates held a sit-down with a dozen troops who all just happened to favor bringing more troops in Iraq. The opinions of this handful of troops earned extensive coverage from CNN, The New York Times, the Associated Press, and Reuters. And yet, as best as I can determine, none of these same news orgs today mentioned the Military Times poll, even though it came out yesterday. Why not? Now that we have poll of the actual attitudes of thousands of troops towards a “surge,” when will the media cover it?
Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly followed up on that question:
I followed up this morning by doing a Nexis search to see just how many outlets reported on the story. Given the results of the poll and the importance of the troops’ opinions, I was surprised at just how little coverage the Military Times survey received.
In terms of newspapers, the San Jose Mercury News and the Seattle Times were the only U.S. papers to run stories of their own. Reuters and UPI mentioned the poll in wire stories, which were not widely picked up. That’s it. That’s all the print coverage the poll received.
Broadcast outlets were a bit better, with CNN and ABC mentioning the poll on the air, but that’s still not exactly widespread coverage.
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not mention a poll that highlights the fact that many troops disapprove of Bush, don't support an escalation, don't see Iraq as part of the war on terror, and don't believe that success in Iraq is likely?It sounds kind of newsworthy.
It is newsworthy. When it’s considered along with the conclusions of the Iraq Study Group and the recommendations of General Casey, the retired generals who spoke out in September and the American public who spoke out clearly at the ballot box in November and as clearly in a Bloomberg/LA Times poll regarding the ISG report.
By better than 2-to-1 margins, the public supports two key recommendations of an independent bipartisan panel called the Iraq Study Group. The panel’s report called for direct U.S. negotiations with Iran and Syria about the future of Iraq and possibly withholding economic and military support from the Iraqi government unless it makes progress on political reforms and national reconciliation.With almost two-thirds saying Iraq is in a civil war, the public’s top priority for the next Congress is setting a timetable for withdrawal. By 62 percent to 35 percent, Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of the war. The survey of 1,489 adults nationwide was taken December 8 through December 11 and has a margin of sampling error of 3 percentage points.
JK was right when he said this in October 2005 and he’s still right:
The way forward in Iraq is not to pull out precipitously or merely promise to stay “as long as it takes.” To undermine the insurgency, we must instead simultaneously pursue both a political settlement and the withdrawal of American combat forces linked to specific, responsible benchmarks.
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It is true that our soldiers increasingly fight side by side with Iraqis willing to put their lives on the line for a better future. But history shows that guns alone do not end an insurgency. The real struggle in Iraq
- Sunni versus Shiia -will only be settled by a political solution, and no political solution can be achieved when the antagonists can rely on the indefinite large scale presence of occupying American combat troops.[...]
General George Casey, our top military commander in Iraq, recently told Congress that our large military presence “feeds the notion of occupation” and “extends the amount of time that it will take for Iraqi security forces to become self-reliant.” And Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, breaking a thirty year silence, writes, ’’Our presence is what feeds the insurgency, and our gradual withdrawal would feed the confidence and the ability of average Iraqis to stand up to the insurgency.”
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We will never be as safe as we should be if Iraq continues to distract us from the most important war we must win—the war on Osama Bin Laden, Al Queda, and the terrorists that are resurfacing even in Afghanistan. ... The President must take a new course, and hold Iraqis accountable. If the President still refuses, Congress must insist on a change in policy.
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Only then will we have provided leadership equal to our soldiers’ sacrifice—and that is what they deserve.
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