War beats economy as top US
concern By Eli Clifton
WASHINGTON - The war in Iraq and other foreign
affairs are more important to voters in the coming
presidential election than the economy, marking the
first time since the Vietnam War era that US citizens
are putting more weight on foreign policy than domestic
concerns, according to a poll released on Wednesday.
Forty-one percent of voting-age adults rated
"war, foreign policy and terrorism" the most important
problems facing the United States, concluded the survey
released by the Pew Research Center (PRC) in association
with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a
Washington-based think-tank. Economic issues topped the
concerns of 26% of respondents, while the same number
chose "other domestic issues", the survey found.
"The September 11 [2001] attacks and the two
wars that followed not only have raised the stakes for
voters as they consider their choice for president, but
also have created deep divisions and conflicting
sentiments over US foreign policy in a troubled time,"
said a PRC statement.
The poll found that nearly
as many respondents favored a "decisive foreign policy"
(62%) as supported a cautious approach (66%). And
reflecting a growing partisan gap on foreign-policy
sentiment, Republican voters, from the party of
President George W Bush, assign higher priority to
decisiveness than to caution, while Democrats do the
opposite.
The survey was conducted July 8-18
among 2,009 adults across the United States.
A
narrow majority of respondents, 53%, still believe it
was the "right decision" to use military force in Iraq,
but the number has dropped from the 74% who held that
view after the US-led attack in March 2003. In a related
field, 52% of respondents said they disapproved of how
the Bush administration has handled the situation in
Iraq, while 43% continue to approve of its actions
there.
In a follow-up poll conducted August 5-10
among 1,512 adults, the PRC found that, more than a
month after the transfer of sovereignty to an interim
Iraqi government, 58% of respondents said Bush does not
have a clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq to
a successful conclusion.
Presumably in response
to the ongoing quagmire in Iraq, a solid 59% of
respondents, in the July foreign policy survey, faulted
the administration for being too quick to use force as a
foreign-policy tool rather than trying to reach
diplomatic solutions. Since May 2003 the number of
respondents who "sometimes" support preemptive military
action had sunk from 45% to 40%, the survey found.
Bush and his main ally, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair, launched the attack on Iraq without the
support of many of their traditional allies, alleging
that the weapons of mass destruction of former president
Saddam Hussein constituted a grave threat. Those weapons
have yet to be found.
In the ongoing
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, public sympathies in the
US still lie predominantly with Israel, by a margin of
40% to 13%, but there has been a noticeable decline in
the percentage of Americans who regard US policies in
the Middle East as "fair" - 35%, down from 47% in May
2003.
The poll found respondents clearly aware
of the loss of respect for the United States
internationally as a result of recent foreign-policy
decisions, with two-thirds saying the country is less
respected by other countries than in the past.
"The fact that two-thirds of US citizens say the
US is less respected in the world is highly
significant," said PRC Editor Carroll Doherty.
Not surprisingly, 87% of those who thought the
war in Iraq was the wrong decision believed the nation
is less respected internationally. "The fact that
respondents say the US is less respected echoes some of
the things [Democratic presidential challenger John]
Kerry has said on the campaign trail," said Doherty.
However, heightened awareness of the threat of
terrorism resulted in 88% of respondents rating "taking
measures to protect the United States from terrorist
attacks" as a "top foreign-policy priority".
The
polls results do not significantly bolster either main
presidential contender, Kerry or Bush. "It's a mixed
message for both of them," said Doherty.
Forty-nine percent of those polled supported
taking into account the interests of US allies when
making foreign-policy decisions while only 37% believed
decisions should be based mostly on the national
interest of the United States.
"They [the US
public] want policy more predicated on allied
interests," said Doherty, adding that the US public sees
"allies as being important, but that doesn't mean the
public is willing to abandon tough measures in the war
on terror".
In terms of domestic security and
civil liberties, respondents by a significant margin,
49% to 29%, were concerned that the government had not
gone far enough to protect the country rather than that
the government had gone too far in restricting civil
liberties.
Although investigations into torture
and other human-rights abuses by US military personnel
against prisoners in the administration's "war on
terrorism" continue, 53% of those polled believed
torture should rarely or never be used to gain important
information from suspected terrorists while a large
minority, 43%, said torture can, at least sometimes, be
justified.
Republicans and Democrats were shown
to hold sharply divergent views on foreign policy and
the "war on terror". Fifty-one percent of Democrats
believed US wrongdoings in dealing with other countries
might have motivated the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks while a majority, 76%, of Republicans rejected
that notion. Eighty percent of Democrats believed the
United States is less respected by other countries than
in the past while only 47% of Republicans agreed with
that statement.
When asked to rank national
priorities, Democrats placed creating and protecting
jobs in the United States as their highest priority,
followed by combating terrorism and slowing the spread
of AIDS. Republicans made fighting terrorism the highest
priority, followed by preventing the spread of weapons
of mass destruction and creating and protecting US jobs.
