A recent Washington Post article avers “a clear majority now saying for the first time that the war has not made the United States safer, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week. The poll indicates that people are not so much gung-ho in favor of the president's policy, but rather are ignoring bad news.” This is another one of those widelly-reported factoids that just aren’t true. Last year around this time they were telling us:
“For the first time since the start of the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans surveyed in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll say the United States made a mistake in sending troops to that country.”
Is it possible they thought it was a mistake because they didn’t feel any safer?
If we look at the real polling numbers, and not just news reports about them, one thing is clearly happening for the first time: a majority of Americans want U.S. troops to begin withdrawing from Iraq. As far as what troop levels ought to be in Iraq, a Gallup poll reports the following :
Send more troops: 10%
Same as now: 26%
Unsure: 5%
Withdraw some: 31%
Withdraw all: 28%
That last statistic is up from 17%.
Arianna Huffington is right to complain that the Democrats are providing no leadership on this issue: what she doesn't say, however, is that they are just as guilty as the Republicans when it comes to supporting the occupation. Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi voted against -- and actively lobbied against -- Rep. Lynn Woolsey's recent resolution calling for an exit strategy from Iraq. John Kerry explicitly denied he wanted to withdraw, and -- depending on which way the wind was blowing that day -- was complaining that we didn't put in enough troops and calling for more. Howard Dean, too.
The American people never wanted this war. They were tricked, lied to, and bamboozled into it by a determined and very well-funded and influential minority. And what's worse is that the very same people are now howling for "regime change" in Iran, and are busy ginning up a war with Tehran. And it isn't just the neocons. Rep. Pelosi is a co-sponsor of something called the "Iran Accountablility Act," which imposes economic and political sanctions on that country if they fail to bow to our demands. Syria gets the same treatment. These are the next two targets at the top of the War Party's agenda -- and the Democrats don't have a problem with that. The war dance has begun, again -- and the Republicans have found a willing and even an enthusiastic partner in the "opposition" party.
The "democratization" (i.e. military subjugation) of the Middle East is a project that the American people are not too keen on, but the elites love it. It gives them the chance to try out their grandiose schemes -- and gives the political class unprecedented power. With an empire to play around with, various ideological, economic, and special interest groups can reward their friends, humiliate their enemies, and impose their social engineering schemes -- for the benefit of mankind, of course.
In Europe, the political class was defeated when they tried to impose the European Union constitution -- a project of similar self-serving intent, in which the elites would get to play around with the lives of ordinary people. An alliance of left and right put a stop to it in the French and Dutch referenda, defeating the do-gooder pro-EU establishment of the "moderate" right and the "sensible" left. Everybody was supposed to think that the EU was inevitable -- except it wasn't.
The same goes for the occupation of Iraq -- and this administration's crazed plan to impose "democracy" on the Middle East. Ordinary people oppose it: they don't see any good reason for it. However, there's just one problem: we aren't allowed to vote on it. The U.S. military is tasked to impose democracy at gunpoint all around the world -- except the one place where it's needed most, and that is in Washington, D.C. There corporate and foreign lobbyists and legislators-elected-for-life have set a course for Empire, and the voters -- beset by two parties with the same foreign policy platform -- can't do a thing about it. We are under political occupation just as surely as the Iraqis suffer under a military occupation
With no outlet of political expression, burgeoning antiwar sentiment is building up like a pressure-cooker. The explosion should be interesting. Let's hope our republic survives it.