> In Iraq, there was a brutal nasty regime that the American public rightly
> felt should in the ideal be eliminated. It was up to the left to articulate
> a strategy and analysis of why non-violent solidarity with the Kurds, Shia
> and other forces seeking democratic change was a more effective option than
> war. The peace movement failed to engage that issue substantially and
> mostly said do nothing.
>
> And that was a substantial reason that large chunks of even liberal opinion
> moved into supporting the war. You can excuse it by saying they were all
> misinformed by the media and such, but it's worth understanding and
> emphasizing that two months ago, only about one-third of the public
> supported war without significant global support, as signified by UN
> endorsement, and now an additional 40% of the public now supports unilateral
> intervention. It is the failure of the antiwar forces to hold that 40% of
> the public that needs to be analyzed.
Nathan, I just don't think the first of these two paragraphs has anything to do with the second one. I, of course, don't agree with your arguments in the first paragraph about (a) how bad our positions on the Kurds, Shi'a, etc., supposedly were, or about (b) how the details of these positions supposedly weakened the movement here. But let's pretend that I did believe those things. I still wouldn't think that the shift from the prewar poll numbers to the postwar poll numbers had anything to do with 'failing to hold' 40% of the people.
If you thought that people behave all the time in such a way that their statements and actions form a logical system, and that statements like 'I do not think the government should do X' are valid as predictors that when the government does X, the respondent will actually say 'I oppose the government now', then you would think that the 'shift' from 30% to 70% was an important matter that 'needs to be analyzed'. But nobody in the social sciences has believed that for a long time.
The classic and still-impressive sociological experiment along this lines was performed by a sociologist named LaPiere in the 1930's. He called up 20 motels in the racially segregated U.S. South and asked them if they would rent a room to a Chinese man. They all said 'no'. Then he drove out to them all with an actual Chinese man with money in his hand. Nineteen of them rented to him. (The 20th motel owner refused to do so in the mistaken belief that the guy was Japanese.)
Saying that you will be a stalwart racist and deny a room to a Chinese man is one thing, but actually turning him away is another thing. This is not a 'shift of 95%'. It is just two different things. Similarly, saying that you would oppose a war, which has not started, under certain conditions, is one thing. Actually opposing the war when there are troops in the field is something entirely different. If you actually want to describe those 40%, they would probably be people who had 'misgivings' about going to war without a UN resolution, and were really voting in favor of the idea that Powell should try to get one. But that's not the same thing as saying that the troops should turn around and come out of Iraq once they are in there. We clearly weren't 'holding' them all that firmly to begin with.
LP