WASHINGTON - The findings of an unprecedented poll of US troops in Iraq are
certain to add to steadily growing pressures on the administration of President
George W Bush to accelerate Washington's withdrawal from a country that is
increasingly seen as being on the verge of all-out civil war.
Along with signs of disaffection and confusion in military ranks, recent
surveys of public opinion at home have shown growing pessimism about the war,
while even some of Bush's staunchest
right-wing supporters, such as National Review founder William F Buckley, are
calling the president's Iraq adventure a failure.
The military survey, carried out between mid-January and mid-February by Le
Moyne College's Center for Peace and Global Studies and the Zogby International
polling firm, found that more than half of US troops in Iraq (51%) favor a full
withdrawal either "immediately" (29%) or within six months (22%).
An additional 21% told interviewers that US troops should leave Iraq between
six and 12 months from now, while only 23% - or less than one in four - agreed
with official Bush policy that the troops should stay "as long as they are
needed".
The face-to-face survey of 944 military respondents, whose names and specific
locations were withheld for security reasons, is the latest in a series of
polls showing a continued erosion of support for the Iraq war, as well as for
Bush himself.
According to a New York Times-CBS poll released on Tuesday, Bush's
public-approval ratings have fallen to an all-time low of 34% - down 8 points
from January, and lower even than the 35% he held in a CBS poll last October in
the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Iraq, along with the controversy over the administration's approval of a Dubai
company to take over the management of terminals in six major US ports, appears
to be a major part of the latest decline. Only 30% of respondents said they
approved of his management of the situation there, compared with 65% who
said they disapproved.
That result echoes a recent Gallup poll that found the public more pessimistic
than ever about progress in the Iraq war: only 31% - almost all of them
self-identified Republicans - said they thought Washington and its allies were
winning there.
The rising tide of popular discontent with the Iraq war - particularly amid
growing signs that the country is moving toward full-scale civil war and
steadily accumulating evidence that the administration failed totally to
prepare for the aftermath of the 2003 invasion - has also prompted a growing
number of defections from the war party's ranks.
"One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed," Buckley, a
right-wing heavyweight for decades, wrote last weekend after a surge of
sectarian violence sparked by the bombing of an important Shi'ite shrine swept
through key Iraqi cities. "The kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat."
Several days later, another prominent right-winger, Bruce Fein, wrote in the
Washington Times that the past week's violence was "sufficient proof that
post-Saddam [Hussein] nation-building has failed. President Bush should
immediately begin an orderly withdrawal of US troops from Iraq."
In anticipation of these desertions, as well as declining public support for
the war, neo-conservative activists who led the campaign to invade Iraq have
been trying hard over the past two weeks to rally the public with a series of
columns - a remarkable number of them from Iraq "with the troops" - extolling
their grit, goodness and determination and warning against defeatism at home.
"Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq - mostly unafraid
that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of
language and religion, the propaganda of state-run Arab media and the cynicism
of the liberal West are all stacked against them," wrote California classicist
Victor Davis Hanson, a favorite of Vice President Dick Cheney, in the National
Review Online.
"Iraq may not have started out as the pivotal front in the war between
democracy and fascism, but it has surely evolved into that," he wrote,
stressing that Washington's current strategy should carry the day.
The new LeMoyne/Zogby poll, however, tells a somewhat different story, at least
from the point of view of its military respondents, nearly 75% of whom were
serving their second, third or fourth six-month tour in Iraq at the time of
their interview.
No less than 72% said US troops should stay no longer than one year in Iraq.
What is particularly remarkable is the 51% majority who favor withdrawal within
six months. That corresponds precisely to the position of Democratic
Representative John Murtha, a highly decorated Marine Corps veteran with
long-standing ties to the military brass, whose impassioned appeals for a swift
redeployment have been denounced by Hanson and other right-wing hawks in and
outside the administration as surrender and a betrayal of the troops.
The respondents - 41% regular army; 25% marines and the rest National Guard and
reserves - also showed uncertainty about their mission in Iraq.
While some 27% said they were "very clear" about the mission, nearly one-third
said they were "somewhat clear", 20% "somewhat unclear" and nearly 25% either
were "very unclear", were "not sure", or had "no understanding".
Asked to assess the relative importance of the different justifications for the
war articulated by Bush over the past several years, three in four soldiers
said "establish[ing] a democracy that could be a model for the Arab world" -
the justification most recently cited by Bush - was neither the "main" nor even
a "major reason" for the US intervention.
More than 90% also did not accept the justification most cited by the
administration before the war - to enforce UN resolutions requiring the
destruction or removal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from Iraq. Less
than 5% of respondents cited that as the "main" or a "major reason".
Remarkably, the two justifications most frequently mentioned by the troops were
those that were discredited after the invasion. Forty-one percent said stopping
"Saddam from protecting al-Qaeda in Iraq" was the "main reason", while another
36% said it was a "major reason". At the same time, 35% said "retaliating for
Saddam's role in the September 11, 2001, attacks" was the "main reason", and
50% called it a "major reason".
Contrary to the administration's view, most troops also believe that
controlling the insurgency - which they see as overwhelmingly indigenous -
would require doubling the number of ground troops and bombing missions.
"The sense is that they're not necessarily really seeing themselves in this war
fighting against al-Qaeda, but more so fighting in the midst of what's turning
out to be a civil war," said the Zogby survey, which noted ominous parallels in
soldiers' attitudes with the Vietnam War.
"These are the sorts of sentiments you started to hear and see
impressionistically from troops coming home towards the end of Vietnam, the
sense that why were we there in the first place, confusion, and what do we
accomplish by staying there?"
Zogby said it was confident that the survey was representative of the troops
serving in Iraq. "We chose good locations; we used random sampling; the
methodology was tight," the pollster said. "We stand by the results."
The Pentagon, which neither authorized nor cooperated with the survey, had no
comment.
