Simply Put, The Public's View Can't Be Put Simply
By Andrew Kohut
Sunday, September 29, 2002; Page B05
Ask a pollster if there is public support for war with Iraq and the answer is likely to be "yes." Ask reporters doing man-in-the-street interviews or traveling around the country, and they are likely to say "no." As New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote on Sept. 18, "Don't believe the polls that a majority of Americans favor a military strike against Iraq. It is just not true."
Who's right here? From my vantage point, they both are. And therein lies the problem -- and the challenge -- in understanding the public's will on this important issue.
Public opinion about a potential war with Iraq does not lend itself to an easy thumbs-up, thumbs-down characterization. Almost all national surveys this year have found a broad base of potential support for using military force to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. In mid-September, for example, the Pew Research Center found that 64 percent favor taking military action to end the Iraqi president's rule. But when pollsters go beyond this initial question, they find lots of qualifications and caveats. Respondents' concerns about the lack of allied backing and the prospect of heavy casualties reduce general support levels dramatically.
Complicating the picture further, as many as four in 10 Americans still have not seriously considered the issue of war with Iraq. The polls also find that Americans may not ultimately judge a war with Iraq only on the basis of an initial military victory. For all that, there appears to be enough potential backing for President Bush to successfully sell war to the American public, as his father did 11 years ago. But he hasn't closed the deal.
Such a complex picture of public opinion is not what headline writers long for, nor is it easy material for the cable chat-show circuit. Press references rarely go beyond something along the lines of "the latest polls show a majority of Americans support a possible invasion of Iraq." So it's little wonder that both sides in the debate about Iraq have laid claim to public backing for their point of view.
The basis for potential backing for a war in Iraq stems from the strong support for the use of military force following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In contrast, the public kicked and screamed about every intervention by the Clinton administration, whether in the distant Balkans or nearby Haiti. The Clinton White House got as much support as could be hoped for the air war in Kosovo, but over the short course of that campaign, Clinton's approval ratings fell more than they did over the entire span of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The attacks of Sept. 11 changed all that. Support for a defense spending hike hit a 25-year high, fueled by female support, as the once yawning gender gap on military issues narrowed significantly. More than 70 percent of men and women backed sending troops to Afghanistan, even at the risk of casualties. And our polling has found that 58 percent of the public supports combating terrorism by using military force against countries attempting to Ddevelop nuclear weapons.
Given the new public mandate -- protect us -- it is not surprising that the idea of military action against Saddam Hussein has gotten such a positive reaction over the past year. He's a bad guy from a dangerous part of the world who wants to do us harm, say Americans. The latest CBS News national poll found that 77 percent think Hussein already possesses weapons of mass destruction, 61 percent believe he wants to use them against us and 51 percent say he was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the first polls after 9/11, support for using force against Iraq was at the 70 percent level. It fell to the low fifties in August, when some prominent Republicans voiced their concerns. However, public support has since rebounded: An average of this month's major national poll results finds more than 60 percent backing military action.
At the same time, the polls consistently find less than majority support when a tag line such as "even if it means thousands of casualties" is added to the question. This is a bit of an unfair test, because most of these questions mention only the cost of a war, not the benefit that might be achieved by such national sacrifice. It is always difficult to predict how the public will react to actual casualties. On the one hand, Americans know that war inevitably risks the lives of soldiers and civilians, and this is implicit in support for military action. On the other, they have grown accustomed to light American losses in military engagements.
The lack of allied backing is an even bigger drain on support for the use of force than the prospect of casualties. Our most recent poll found that 64 percent generally favor military action against Iraq, but that withers to 33 percent if our allies do not join us.
The first President Bush faced the same challenge, but turned public opinion to his favor with the November 1990 U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an Iraqi pullout from Kuwait. Prior to that resolution, Gallup found just 37 percent of the public favored going to war with Iraq. After the decision, majorities of the public favored going to war in every Gallup survey. Indeed, by January 1991 the only public tension was not over whether to go, but when.
It is unlikely that this President Bush will persuade the public to go to war without a coalition of traditional allies. In fact, the importance of the United Nations was underscored by public reaction to Bush's U.N. speech earlier this month. After his appearance there, the percentage of Americans who think that he has explained clearly what's at stake for the United States in Iraq rose from 37 percent to 52 percent. This was a step in the right direction for the president, but it still pales in comparison with the 77 percent who thought his father had a clear rationale for using force against Iraq in the fall of 1990.
While the current President Bush's approach is a work in progress, so is the public's thinking. Since his U.N. speech, an increasing number of respondents say they have thought a great deal about the issue -- 55 percent, up from 46 percent in August. But that is still below the 66 percent who had given careful thought to the question of war or peace on the eve of the Gulf War.
Part of this deliberative process may well raise the question of what will constitute a successful outcome in Iraq. We were surprised when our Sept. 11 anniversary polling found that, despite the quick rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan, relatively few Americans described that war as a success; fully 70 percent said it is too early to tell. Accordingly, two-thirds of our respondents believed we should keep forces in Afghanistan to maintain the peace. And a growing majority think that the U.S. will have to help rebuild the country.
No doubt, many Americans have the same vision of the end game in Iraq should U.S. forces quickly dispatch Hussein's troops. Both CBS and Pew surveys find Americans expecting that, unlike the Gulf War, the U.S. involvement in Iraq will be lengthy.
Al Gore and Tom Daschle's vocal criticism this past week of the Bush policy may encourage further public reflection and help influence how America makes up its mind in coming months. So far, a plurality of the public believes that Congress has asked too few questions about Bush's intentions. A dozen years ago, support for the Persian Gulf War deepened following a sometimes contentious debate. Today's polls do agree on one point: A conflicted public would welcome a comparable airing of the pros and cons of the Bush administration's Iraq policy.
Andrew Kohut is director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.