Today's Washington Post has a fascinating new article on three recent public opinion polls taken in Iraq. Taken together, they demonstrate yet another flaw in the "stay the course" strategy: the Iraqi people want us to leave, and they want us to leave now. An excerpt:
BAGHDAD, Sept. 26 -- A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.
In Baghdad, for example, nearly three-quarters of residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent of those asked favoring an immediate pullout, according to State Department polling results obtained by The Washington Post.Another new poll, scheduled to be released on Wednesday by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, found that 71 percent of Iraqis questioned want the Iraqi government to ask foreign forces to depart within a year. By large margins, though, Iraqis believed that the U.S. government would refuse the request, with 77 percent of those polled saying the United States intends keep permanent military bases in the country.
The stark assessments, among the most negative attitudes toward U.S.-led forces since they invaded Iraq in 2003, contrast sharply with views expressed by the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Last week at the United Nations, President Jalal Talabani said coalition troops should remain in the country until Iraqi security forces are "capable of putting an end to terrorism and maintaining stability and security."
"Only then will it be possible to talk about a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq," he said.
Recent polls show many Iraqis in nearly every part of the country disagree.
Here are the poll results in visual form:
So the question become do we listen to Iraqi leaders, or do we listen to the people? And if we chose the former over the later, what will that mean for our efforts to end the insurgency?
One more brief excerpt:
"The very fact that there is such a low support for American forces has to do with the American failure to do basically anything for Iraqis," said Mansoor Moaddel, a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University, who commissioned a poll earlier this year that also found widespread support for a withdrawal. "It's part of human nature. People respect authority and power. But the U.S. so far has been unable to establish any real authority."
I know I've said this a thousand times now, but it still baffles me that a supposedly "conservative" administration so badly bungled the establishment of law and order after the removal of Saddam. The basis of a belief in "limited" government is that government should only do what is necessary to ensure the safety and security of its citizens, thus creating the conditions that will allow civil society to thrive. Even conservatives understand that these things don't happen on their own - government does have a legitimate role to play, even in their more limited vision of its place in society.
But of course conservatism had nothing to do with their Iraq policy. Politics did. When they established the Coalition Provisional Authority, they staffed it with inexperienced partisan supporters, not experienced nation-building professionals. It was as if they thought a new state would build itself.
Aside from the direct implications for Iraq, what's most frightening about this is what it has done to the impression of American power in the Middle East. We may not have been greeted as liberators when we arrived, but we certainly were greeted with awe. In the early days of the war, our military (and perhaps even political) superiority was on display for everyone to see. But then, as in Afghanistan, we failed to finish the job, and chaos ensued. Now, rather than being seen as an invincible fighting force, we're seen as a nation that couldn't get the job done.
It did not have to be this way. This administration committed to fighting, but it never took seriously what would be needed to win. And the impact of that disastrous mistake will be felt for a generation, if not more.
UPDATE: I notice that Kevin Drum has also weighed in on this story, including in particular the concern among Iraqis over the establishment of permanent US bases in Iraq. For reasons I simply cannot understand, the story of the construction of massive permeant bases in Iraq is one that has been largely ignored by just about everyone. Amazingly, not only is the issue finally getting noticed, its managed to get the attention of Congress itself.
I'm not a fan of Sen. joe Biden (D-DE) - I'll never forgive him for pushing the asinine RAVE Act of 2002; how bottles of water sold in clubs could ever be considered "drug paraphernalia" is just beyond me - but in this case he has done some serious good, and for that we owe him our thanks.
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