Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Popular vs Unpopular


Over at Riehl World View I saw a reference to a poll that surprised me:

Eighty-four percent of Americans clearly support being in Iraq for a minimum of one more year. Now forget the word surge that has been bandied about. The word in itself means nothing.

Ask yourself this, with a baseline of 84% supporting a continued presence in Iraq for a minimum of a year, what do you suppose they would say if you asked:

Given your support for one more year of war in Iraq, what would you say if military commanders felt a relatively small increase in troops could reduce the commitment to ten months and save American and Iraqi lives?


I have to admit I have never been comfortable with the notion of popular war. What war is popular? My Grandmother got a telegram during WW2 from the War Department telling her that they did not know where her son was or if he was alive. Missing In Action. They found him a couple of weeks later in a field hospital where he lay badly wounded. If they had asked her if the war was worth it I doubt very much she would have said it was. No, it is not about popular, it is about determination.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who knows? Because he can't talk. Because if he does talk, he knows that whatever he says, his words will be endlessly dissected and ridiculed. Or maybe because he thinks that Americans are not yet up to hearing what needs to be said. Or he can't bear to say those things himself.

Unknown said...

bird dog.

Oh I think he has tried, but all you have to do is look at the headlines following his speech to see how that kind of thing works out.

Bush admits mistakes, calls for more troops.

Bush rhetoric hard to reconcile with facts.

It is enough to make you wanta shoot yourself. Or someone else.