HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE WAR?
On the first anniversary of the American-led war to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, that is a common and complex question.
There are many responses, some of them general and measured in mass polling numbers. Early this month, a Gallup poll of the U.S. showed that the number of people who believed the war was going “moderately well to very well” had dropped to 55 percent.
But there are responses at a much more personal level too, the kinds of reactions that cannot be measured by public opinion polls.
For those who have lost a child, a parent, a brother or sister, without question the war is not going well. In fact, it has become an agony.
For those who have waited now for more than a year to see their loved ones, the regulars, reservists and guard members who found themselves swept up in the nation’s first pre-emptive war, the conflict has extracted a heavy personal toll.
Public opinion surveys can collect only those numbers from the large stage. Inevitably, what is lost is an individual right to have a feeling about the war that isn’t expressed in such common, simplistic terms.
Some people believe the war must be supported because we have a patriotic duty to support the commander in chief in wartime.
Others argue that war, whatever its rationale, is immoral, that no political explanation can ever muster the weight it needs to outweigh that conclusion. They would rather die than fight.
Somewhere in between those extremes is everybody else, and the best the opinion business can say about this group is that it is always making up its mind, always pondering and likely to shift opinion depending on how the questions are asked.
It’s a mistake to think of polling numbers as more revealing than they can be.
Someone who says he does not believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq may still support the war. The same holds true for connections between Hussein and the larger world of terrorism.
People may doubt that connection but still express strong support for the war. They may see a connection and still oppose the war.
There are stories, then, behind polling numbers. If you asked in December, for example, whether the U.S. should have taken military action to get rid of Iraqi leader Hussein, almost 7 in 10 people responded yes.
Ask the question at the same time in another way.
Was getting rid of Hussein worth the cost in lives and financial burden?
Only 45 percent believed it was worth it when put that way. Just about the same number said it was not worth it.
There is a body of very general opinion, however, on this first anniversary of the war.
Without pushing the numbers too hard, or interpreting signs that simply aren’t there, what does it show?
People are not as tolerant of the idea of war on Iraq as they were when it all began with armored charges across the sands and defenders who seemed to melt away or were easily overcome.
Those numbers have been dropping for the past year, although not precipitously. A year ago, almost 8 in 10 people thought the U.S. should have taken military action to oust Hussein. Just a few weeks ago, that number had declined to about 6 in 10.
President Bush has seen support for his management of the war erode too, which was probably inevitable, given the shifting nature of public opinion. Three-quarters of the people polled a year ago approved of his performance.
Time and the experience of being a nation at war have cut that number almost in half. It doesn’t mean Bush is in political trouble because of the war.
But it does mean some of the automatic support that has always been there when a president first sends troops into combat has melted away. The hard realities have settled in. If you could take a walk across America, then, what would you find out about this war?
First, you would put human faces on the polling numbers. Then you would understand what a complicated nation we live in, and how difficult it is for people to cope with the challenges of a distant war.
That is what we sought to do on this first anniversary of the conflict, put a human face on the abstraction of the polling numbers as a way of helping you answer that common and complex question: “How do you feel about the war?”
