US, Iraqi views of occupation
converging By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - One year after President George W
Bush declared an end to "major hostilities" in Iraq,
public opinion there and in the United States is
beginning to converge as people in both countries
increasingly agree that the US invasion and occupation
might not have been such a good idea after all. That is
one conclusion of two major public opinion polls
released on Thursday.
One poll by the New York
Times and CBS News suggested that a record 58 percent of
US respondents now believe the invasion was not worth
the cost in lives and resources. And another by CNN, USA
Today, and Gallup found that 57 percent of
Iraqis believe US-led coalition forces should leave
their country "in the next few months".
The two
polls, coming on a day in which at least 10 more US
soldiers lost their lives and sporadic skirmishing
continued in the besieged central Iraqi city of
Fallujah, suggest that public opinion in both countries
is increasingly disillusioned with the policies pursued
in Iraq by the Bush administration.
Bush's
approval rating in the United States for his handling of
Iraq, according to the Times/CBS poll, has fallen to 41
percent, down from 49 percent in March and 59 percent
last December.
The president's ratings are not
doing so well in Iraq, either, according to the CNN/USA
Today/Gallup poll, which found that 55 percent of the
nearly 3,500 Iraqis polled in late March and early April
throughout the country had either somewhat (11 percent)
or very (44 percent) unfavorable views of Bush, as
opposed to 24 percent who described their assessments of
him as either very or somewhat favorable.
In
releasing the Iraq survey, Gallup stressed that it was
taken before the siege of Fallujah and Najaf, and that
it therefore did "not reflect Iraqi views of what has
happened in the last three weeks". Most US-based
analysts and Iraq-based reporters have noted that public
opinion in Iraq has turned more strongly against the US
occupation as a result of these events, in which at
least 126 US soldiers and 1,200 Iraqis have reportedly
been killed.
Of the two polls, the Iraq survey
is probably the most significant if only because it is
the first independent nationwide survey taken since the
US invasion. About 13 percent of those polled were in
the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, which, having
enjoyed a de facto independence from Baghdad since
shortly after the first Gulf War (which ended in 1991),
is considered the most pro-US part of the country.
The poll indicated considerable ambivalence on
the part of Iraqis. For example, while a solid majority
support an immediate military pullout (defined as within
"the next few months"), 53 percent said they would feel
"less safe" if coalition forces "left Iraq today".
Twenty-eight percent said they would feel "more safe".
Similarly, 51 percent said they were either
"much" (14 percent) or "somewhat" (37 percent) better
off than they were before the invasion and 61 percent
said former president Saddam Hussein's ouster was worth
the hardships they had suffered since the invasion. Only
28 percent disagreed with the latter assessment.
At the same time, 46 percent said they believed
the invasion and occupation had done more harm than
good, compared with only 33 percent who said they had
done more good than harm. Sixteen percent said it was
the same on balance.
And while 76 percent said
they were freer to express their political views in
public since the invasion, 74 percent said they had felt
afraid to go outside their home at night for safety
reasons.
As in the US poll, the trend lines in
Iraqi public opinion were found to be distinctly
negative. Thus, 71 percent of the Iraqi respondents said
they considered coalition forces mostly as "occupiers"
rather than liberators (19 percent). That rose to an
overwhelming 81 percent when respondents from the
Kurdish areas were excluded from the sample.
Asked how they would have answered the same
question at the time of the invasion, the entire sample
split evenly, with 43 percent on either side. The change
suggests that nearly one-third of Iraqis who had
welcomed the invasion now see it as an occupation.
Similarly, asked whether conditions for "peace
and stability" had improved or worsened over the three
months before the survey, 25 percent said they had
improved, while 54 percent said they had become worse.
Nineteen percent said there was no change.
On
the performance of the US-led Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) and the occupation forces, Iraqis were
also generally negative.
On a 1-5 scale, 42
percent rated the CPA's performance as "very bad" or
"fairly bad", while only 25 percent gave it positive
marks. Nearly two-thirds said the CPA's actions have
turned out worse than expected, compared with only 22
percent who said they turned out better.
One-third of respondents gave the conduct of US
forces in Iraq positive marks; 58 percent said they had
behaved "fairly" or "very badly". But among those who
assessed the conduct negatively, only 7 percent said
their judgment was based on "personal experience", and
38 percent said it was based on what they had personally
seen.
Fifty-four percent said their views were
based on "what [they] have heard". Indeed, 94 percent of
respondents said neither they nor any of their household
members has had direct personal contact with US military
forces.
Iraqi respondents also gave US forces
consistently poor marks for reconstruction activities,
and two-thirds agreed with the statement that the
soldiers did "not try at all" to "keep ordinary Iraqis
from being killed/wounded during exchanges of gunfire" -
a perception that may have increased as a result of the
hundreds killed in Fallujah this month.
But if
Iraqis are increasingly disillusioned and angry at the
United States, the public here in the US is also
increasingly unhappy.
Only one-third of US
respondents now say that Iraq has been worth the costs
in US lives and money. On the issue of whether
Washington should withdraw as soon as possible or stay
in Iraq for as long as it takes to create a stable
democracy, the public is now evenly split at 46 percent
on each side.
And while 53 percent of the public
saw Iraqis as "grateful" for the invasion one year ago,
only 38 percent see it that way now. Forty-eight percent
now view Iraqis as "resentful" - almost twice the
percentage as a year ago.
At the time of the
invasion itself, 24 percent of the public described it
as a mistake, while 70 percent said it was not. Thirteen
months later, a plurality of 48 percent now believes it
was a mistake, according to the survey.
