Did you read any of the data? I looked at the first and read the questions.
Did you note this bit - when asked if the Bush plan or the democrats plan was better 31% went with Bush and 25% with the dems....hardly a ringing endorsement for surrender. When specificaly asked about a withdrawal plan, given 4 options, immediate withdrawal, in a year, eventually, and reinforce, the numbers were 17% for immediate, 33% for in a year, and the rest for longer or reinforcment. That is 50% support for withdrawal but the question was pretty wishy washy...In addition, if you look at their trend for the same question, you see support for running away is down from November.
In short, you spin the numbers to get what you want. I suspect the rest of the polls are similiar.
I think this discussion has been a little over-complexified. (to use a presumed Bush-ism!)
Certainly there are elements of the Left that are axiomatically opposed to any military effort, regardless. Take for example the grief handed to the Clinton people over their use of force in Iraq in responding to agressive actions, not to mention the dressing-down Albright and Co. received over their actions in Bosnia.
There is a separate element of the Democrats who are fine with war or use of force, as long as THEY are the ones responsible for the policy. Note it doesn’t matter whether there is good, sound reason for use of force, it just has to be their idea. If Clinton had invaded Iraq, all would be fine as far as “his” elements of the Democratic party are concerned, as well as the major elements of the media. There can be little doubt the war would be portrayed MUCH differently in the press if all were as it is, and Clinton were in office.
But what we are seeing is a convergence of opinion and effort between the moderate elements of the Democratic Party, as exemplified by the Clinton-crowd, and the reflexive anti-war bunch. The anti-war crowd is being their consistent selves. The moderates are simply being opportunistic. Of the two, I have far more respect for the far-Left anti-war bunch, because while I disagree with them in just about every possible way, and think they are foolishly unrealistic in their views, they are at lest sticking to their long-held position. The opportunistic moderates however know perfectly well they are selling-out the country’s interests, not to mention lives and well-being of our soldiers, simply to make a grab for power. They are far less worthy of respect, and should be even more quickly dismissed than the far-Left activist crowd. The Opportunists during the Clinton years made innumerable public statements about taking-out Saddam and changing Iraq’s regieme, but simply because it was a Republican administration that undertook the very action they so vociferously promoted and supported during the 1990s, they now vilify Bush for doing exaclty what they said they wanted.
Also unworthy of respect or attention are the handful of Republicans who have switched positions for the transparent reason that they think it will save their political necks. Buchanon is simply a one-off isolationist who represents no view that is widely held anywhere, and should likewise be disregarded.
As to polls, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, they are irrelevent. This country in not a democracy, and was never intended to be run like one for the very reason that the People are fickle and easily swayed by emotional appeals that can easily work counter to long-term public interests. Those who point to current polls to support their argument that we should abandon Iraq are being dishonest, because they were arguing that just such polls should be ignored when they didn’t reflect their views.
Thank you, FIT guy for a thoughtful and well reasoned analysis.
The entire premise of it is, to quote Mike Tyson, “ludicrisp”, as evidenced by this statement, upon whigh his entire strawman rests:
If Clinton had invaded Iraq, all would be fine as far as “his†elements of the Democratic party are concerned, as well as the major elements of the media.
FITG, I notice you conveniently denied the existence of those who simply believe, and with good reason, that this war with Iraq was wrong, wrong, wrong. In your demonization of Democrats, you cannot conceive there’s a unifying principle behind support of some military actions and opposition to others.
Notice most Democrats supported the President’s invasion of Afghanistan. (This should not be surprising; Afghanistan was indisputably harboring the masterminds of the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor.) This flies in the face of your claim that Democrats are fine with military action “as long as Democrats are in power.” They clearly weren’t in power; Republicans controlled both the Congress and the Presidency. My only complaint was that we ought to have formally declared war against Afghanistan.
Since that truth, conveniently omitted from your polemic, contradicts your premises, it also follows that your conclusions are wrong.
In short, you spin the numbers to get what you want. I suspect the rest of the polls are similiar.
O.o
The first link was from last year.
Down from November 2005.
The later links are for more recent polls.
Up from the first.
And you accuse ME of spinning.
The second is a weekend poll, notorous for oversampling democrats. and followed a week of democrat propaganda on the issue. There are no internals provided.
The third had no internals and oversampled democrats
The last is a PEW poll, notoriously left leaning. The internals are again missing, there are a few questions of note that you sort of forgot:
when asked to characterize Congress on the war, the excellent and good categroies got 22%, the Fair/poor got 73%
They just love the democrat congress. Bush got better numbers
When asked if Congress should have a lot of influence on iraq, they got 38% but 40% only approved of ‘some’ influence.
The majority on withdrawal was a majority for withdrawal by Aug 08, not now.
The trend on right/wrong on iraq was 43/49 im March, 41/51 in November and 45/49 for Mar 06....in short, VERY little change over the last year.
FITG, I notice you conveniently denied the existence of those who simply believe, and with good reason, that this war with Iraq was wrong, wrong, wrong. In your demonization of Democrats, you cannot conceive there’s a unifying principle behind support of some military actions and opposition to others.
Notice most Democrats supported the President’s invasion of Afghanistan. (This should not be surprising; Afghanistan was indisputably harboring the masterminds of the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor.) This flies in the face of your claim that Democrats are fine with military action “as long as Democrats are in power.” They clearly weren’t in power; Republicans controlled both the Congress and the Presidency. My only complaint was that we ought to have formally declared war against Afghanistan.
Since that truth, conveniently omitted from your polemic, contradicts your premises, it also follows that your conclusions are wrong.
First off, I’ll take exception to your use of the term “deamonizing”. This is a needless, innacurate and inflammetory remark. I haven’t deamonized anyone, I have instead criticized their position from my own perspective, which is a perfectly legitimate and honest approach to take. I have in the past, and still do vote for Democrats when I think they hold a reasonable view on issues that coincides with my own. Somehow I don’t think the same is true of you and Republicans.
I certainly accept that there are Democrats that think the war in Iraq is “wrong, wrong, wrong.”. There are also Republicans that think this way. That has nothing to do with the very focused premise I was commenting on, which is the question of abandoning Iraq without any consideration of the consequences. Introducing a different topic and confusing it with the one I was discussing doesn’t even make a counter-argument to my point, much less invalidate it in any way.
Not only did most Democrats support Afghanistan, most of them supported Iraq too, so what’s your point? If anything, this underscores my point about their opportunism, especially when one considers all the tortured explainations from people like Hillary and John Kerry to account for their conflicting comments made to various different groups. (” I actually voted for the Bill before I voted against it”, “It needs to pass that international test..” and many others)
I agree about the Declaration of War issue, I think it is a bit gutless on the part of both parties.
Thank you, FIT guy for a thoughtful and well reasoned analysis.
The entire premise of it is, to quote Mike Tyson, “ludicrisp”, as evidenced by this statement, upon whigh his entire strawman rests:
If Clinton had invaded Iraq, all would be fine as far as “his†elements of the Democratic party are concerned, as well as the major elements of the media.
If you actually believe this, you are so hopelessly out of touch with reality that objective discussion is pointless.
While the degree to which the media supports and promotes a Liberal view may be debatable, the fact that they do is not.
Oversampling on democrats, you claim. Interesting. On what do you base this?
And since Dems are not, by and large, calling for immediate withdrawal, a withdrawal within two years seems to be just fine.
Either way, the majority of Americans are for “cut and run"… feel free to find polls that suggest the opposite.
Weekend polls always seem to oversample democrats. I have no idea why, but you can look it up. The other poll that oversampled democrats, actually, of the around 850 folk sampled, over 500 were democrats. The poll did this on purpose as they were trying to sample another issue involving folk who voted dem in 2006. They admit as much and claim they adjusted the war results to correct for the oversampling but think about it… If the normal population of voters is about 30% dem 30% republican and 40% unenrolled, and the poll samples over 65% democrat, you are going to get a skewed number no matter how you ‘correct’ for the oversampling.
First off, I’ll take exception to your use of the term “deamonizing”. This is a needless, innacurate and inflammetory remark. I haven’t deamonized anyone, I have instead criticized their position from my own perspective, which is a perfectly legitimate and honest approach to take.
I stand by my characterization. When you make the claim that there are two, and only two, kinds of Democrats (craven opportunists and loony pacifists), you are demonizing, because you begin your argument by constructing an utterly false picture of a hundred million Americans.
I have in the past, and still do vote for Democrats when I think they hold a reasonable view on issues that coincides with my own. Somehow I don’t think the same is true of you and Republicans.
You’d be wrong. I’ve voted for Republicans. For example, the same year (1990) I first voted for Paul Wellstone for my Senator, I voted for Arne Carlson for governor, for example. And that was when I was merely 19 years old, and at my most radical leftish philosophy.
Even in my very first election, 1989, where I voted for Jim Scheibel to replace George Latimer as mayor of St. Paul, I voted for a Republican for another office. Can’t remember who, though.
And yes, I know I’ve dated myself.
I certainly accept that there are Democrats that think the war in Iraq is “wrong, wrong, wrong.”. There are also Republicans that think this way. That has nothing to do with the very focused premise I was commenting on, which is the question of abandoning Iraq without any consideration of the consequences.
You did not clearly frame your premise, nor did you allow for such clear-thinking Democrats.
Introducing a different topic and confusing it with the one I was discussing doesn’t even make a counter-argument to my point, much less invalidate it in any way.
Perhaps so - but at the very least it did force you to clarify your argument.
Not only did most Democrats support Afghanistan, most of them supported Iraq too, so what’s your point?
Most Congressional Democrats did. The same is not true of Democrats in the laity, who were divided and deeply skeptical.
If anything, this underscores my point about their opportunism, especially when one considers all the tortured explainations from people like Hillary and John Kerry to account for their conflicting comments made to various different groups. (” I actually voted for the Bill before I voted against it”, “It needs to pass that international test..” and many others)
A) “I voted for the bill before I voted against it” was a very clumsy remark, but it was very true. Kerry voted for it when it included a clause detailing the source of the funds. When that clause was removed, Kerry then voted against the bill, as he wanted fiscal responsibility in our funding. Oh, and it referred to an $87 billion funding bill, not an authorization bill.
B) “Global” test, not “international” test—the test being the very sensible one that we can present a solid case that the need for our foreign military intervention is vital, as Kerry explained in the debate where he made that other clumsy remark.
Neither of those were ‘conflicting’ comments, nor were they even irrational ones - they were very pragmatic.
I agree about the Declaration of War issue, I think it is a bit gutless on the part of both parties.
The reason they didn’t was because a declaration of war includes a recognition of the government of the foreign nation (Afghanistan) as the legitimate government of the nation. And that brings certain rules of engagement (such as the Geneva Conventions) into play. I agree, gutless.
Thank you, FIT guy for a thoughtful and well reasoned analysis.
The entire premise of it is, to quote Mike Tyson, “ludicrisp”, as evidenced by this statement, upon whigh his entire strawman rests:
If Clinton had invaded Iraq, all would be fine as far as “his†elements of the Democratic party are concerned, as well as the major elements of the media.
I agree with FIT---Democrats would absolutely have supported this war if it were a Democrat president. See how Madeline Albright and George Soros describe Clinton’s unilateral, non-UN approved bombings of Yugoslavia and Bosnia in this review of books each has written:
The Temporary Doves:
Of all the historical precedents that paved the way for President George W. Bush’s war against Iraq, the most directly relevant was Bill Clinton’s 1999 bombing of the rump Yugoslavia.
Like Gulf War II, the 78-day NATO air campaign in Kosovo was waged without the explicit authorization of the United Nations. (Of the two, the Iraq war had much more of a U.N. mandate, through Resolution 1441, which gave Iraq a “final opportunity”—one it did not take—to comply fully with all previous Security Council resolutions or else face “serious consequences.") Like Iraq, Yugoslavia was a sovereign country that was bombed into submission for essentially internal infractions. Both wars were expressions of American exasperation at European impotence in the face of dictatorial slaughter. Slobodan Milosevic, like Saddam Hussein, was described as a modern-day Adolf Hitler, eager to practice genocide against minority tribes while scrambling for horrible weapons to menace peaceful neighbors. Supporters of both wars frequently invoked the Munich Agreement of 1938, in which the West appeased Hitler rather than defend allied Czechoslovakia. Opponents of both wars warned that the target countries were colonially conceived multi-ethnic basket cases not conducive to postwar democratization. And the United States led the fight against both dictators despite urgent warnings from antiwar activists and multilateralism enthusiasts that each new bomb would lower the threshold for waging modern war. Kosovo made Iraq possible.
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And for those of us who supported Clinton’s Wilsonianism but not Bush’s, these books should help answer two questions we really ought to be asking ourselves: Is our support for America’s activist role dependent on high moral principle, or is it tethered to partisan politics? And did we lower the bar for military intervention?
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Albright’s approach to this dilemma was embodied in her famous comment to then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell in 1995: “What are you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can’t use it?” She consistently lobbied for the use of force—threatening invasion of Haiti, bombing Milosevic to the negotiating table, levying and tightening sanctions all around the globe. When military adventures went awry, as in Somalia, the “firepower was insufficient.” The failure to intervene in Rwanda? “My deepest regret.” Did Albright worry much that an ever-more-activist America might encourage unhealthy dependency, sow global resentment, and create unholy temptation in the White House? Something close to the opposite: “For all the power of the United States,” she laments at one point, “we were not able to dictate events.”
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So the great Albright/neocon split comes down to Bush’s style more than his substance. This is largely the message communicated by George Soros, the wealthy hedge fund operator and philanthropist, who has in recent years become a surprisingly harsh critic of the same global capitalism and American-led democratization he had long championed (and profited from). “One of the reasons I was so opposed to the invasion of Iraq,” Soros writes in his brisk little polemic, The Bubble of American Supremacy, “was that the action was liable to give nation building a bad name.”
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So what’s wrong with regime change in Iraq, whose dictator made the democratically elected (and defeated) Vladimir Meciar look like Thomas Jefferson? Soros’ explanation is almost laughably tortured: “When the weapons of mass destruction could not be found, President Bush fell back on the justification of liberating Iraq from a heinous dictator and introducing democracy. That is indeed a noble cause, which could have justified the invasion if the president had made a case for it. But that was not the case that President Bush had presented to Congress, and presumably, Congress would not have endorsed it.”
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To be only slightly unfair, Soros seems to oppose toppling tyrants only when it is Bush’s White House doing the dirty work.
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But both fail to acknowledge that the democratizing idealism of Bush administration officials such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is in fact suspiciously similar to their own nosy Wilsonianism. They do not ponder whether aggressive Democratic interventionism made Bush’s Republican (and therefore less palatable) version more possible. To the contrary: Soros even writes an entire chapter on how to overcome that annoying obstacle of “sovereignty” when meddling in the affairs of tyrants. He and Albright both skate over the fact that, in Kosovo especially, their pro-war and anti-U.N. arguments could be cut and pasted into Dick Cheney’s talking points on Iraq.
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Somewhere within these ominous warnings, a small but tangible Democratic foreign policy distinction begins to emerge. Munich is the mind-set, but not if it prevents us from confronting still more little Hitlers. It’s not the invasion, it’s the motivation. Selective use of unilateralism and even pre-emptive military action is OK; just don’t be rude about it.
I agree with FIT---Democrats would absolutely have supported this war if it were a Democrat president. See how Madeline Albright and George Soros describe Clinton’s unilateral, non-UN approved bombings of Yugoslavia and Bosnia in this review of books each has written:
In Yugoslavia, there was internecine violence as the situation there had devolved into anarchy and nacent genocide.
In Iraq, we had a contained and toothless tiger presiding over a stable, if despotically governed, nation.
