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On August 28 2018 17:30 Liquid`Drone wrote:
In that case current american support of the Iraq war should be nearing 0, as current democratic and republican leadership both think it was idiotic..
Yes but the Iraq war had a massive popular support and people hate to admit they were wrong, especially in a culture where it’s considered a sign of weakness. They also hate to admit that their troops weren’t the « good guys » being heroic, they hate to admit that their children died for the hurbis of a bunch of neocons messianic doodoos and that they cheered all the way.
And frankly, in a way I understand them.
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Judging support for a war is always a difficult prospect.
1) Nations naturally pull together in times of war. When those three letters come out of our leaders' mouths, some people get to protesting, but the majority tend to batten down the hatches. It's why wars grew to be considered a cheap political move.
2) The public is usually poorly informed about why the war is really happening. The Iraq war is the biggest example, but it means that people are often supporting a war they wouldn't if they knew more details.
3) Politicians' literal job is to convince people to support things based on number 2.
So all a poll can really tell you in the moment is that the public supports a war currently. It doesn't say that the public would support the war if it really knew what was going on. I would wager the majority of Americans supported the Iraq War based on the idea that they were getting back at the terrorists who attacked the USA. Would that support have been as high if they knew that Iraq had zero affiliation with those terrorists?
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I guess no one has interest to stir up this too much either. The GOP deceived the public into going into an illegal war for totally bogus reason. And most Democrats went along all the way. It’s not very selling to talk about how awful an idea it was when you or at leadt most of your party is or was directly responsible for it. As for Trump, he just rants about anything and i guess his base was happy to see him demolish « the establishment » without even thinking about what he was saying. I can totally see his voters cheering at him sayong the war was a disaster and say the next day the war was a great idea.
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United States24732 Posts
On August 28 2018 19:48 Biff The Understudy wrote:
And most Democrats went along all the way.
Not sure this is true on capital hill or not, but most people I talked to that weren't republicans were against the war in Iraq pretty early on. It took some months for enough information to start coming out to show that we had no business there, but most democrats were very accepting of that information and outspoken about it (although perhaps not enough).
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Norway28704 Posts
On August 28 2018 20:00 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On August 28 2018 19:48 Biff The Understudy wrote:
And most Democrats went along all the way. Not sure this is true on capital hill or not, but most people I talked to that weren't republicans were against the war in Iraq pretty early on. It took some months for enough information to start coming out to show that we had no business there, but most democrats were very accepting of that information and outspoken about it (although perhaps not enough).
This was not my experience at all. I got in heated arguments with many americans who otherwise seemed like reasonable democrats but who still were really positive towards invading iraq to topple saddam.
http://www.pewresearch.org/2008/03/19/public-attitudes-toward-the-war-in-iraq-20032008/
![[image loading]](http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/old-assets/publications/770-1.gif)
![[image loading]](http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/old-assets/publications/770-2.gif)
For something to have 72%+ support with americans, it must have the support from a significant amount of democrats, too.
I guess it depends on what you mean by early on, though. In 2004 the mood has changed some, for sure, and I think the biggest euphoria was during the 'mission accomplished' phase (the phrase being uttered may 1st, 2003).
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United States24732 Posts
Maybe the younger generation was skewed towards not supporting the war. Discussions in my high school tended to be very one sided against the war(s) in ~2002.
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People most likely to be conscripted to die in wars tend to be less enthusiastic than those who aren't. But we will never know what public opinion of the Iraqi war is now, as it isn't a hot politicla topic; the poll as displayed ended in 2008 it seems.
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On August 28 2018 17:08 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Danglar's response to my post/question was obviously on point. I thought the support was lower in 2015 - seeing how IS was already in effect then (so the negative consequences of destabilizaton should be obvious). But I just.. don't get how it can actually be 50-50? Democrats seem to largely agree on it having been a mistake, and it seemed like Trump gained republican support from bashing bush over it / claiming that he was always against it. If something is 50-50 in the US, it tends to have at most 10% support with republicans or democrats, and I don't understand how Trump could turn something into a winning message with republicans if 90% of them disagreed with him.
did we get a cite for the exact poll? I don't remember whether we did.
A lot can change depending on the exact phrasing of the poll question asked.
and ofc there's poll to poll variation that occurs.
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Norway28704 Posts
nope and seeing how the numbers were 54-38 back in 2008 I don't see how it becomes 50-50 in 2015 (when the negative consequences were all the more obvious), but polls are polls and there might have been some differences in methodology or phrasing.
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One of the biggest splits among Dems and those who want to pull the party leftward deals in the party's attitude towards war. Far too many Dems spare the military industrial complex from much needed criticism and reigning in.
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On August 28 2018 22:10 Liquid`Drone wrote:
nope and seeing how the numbers were 54-38 back in 2008 I don't see how it becomes 50-50 in 2015 (when the negative consequences were all the more obvious), but polls are polls and there might have been some differences in methodology or phrasing.
without a cite, are we sure the memory is even accurate? human memory is notoriously unreliable after all; maybe the poll results simply weren't 50-50. or the poll was from a different time.
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On August 28 2018 22:35 JimmiC wrote:
The people I have talked about it with who support the war have a logic of something like "Saddam was as evil as Hitler just with less power, if we left him he would have had those weapons at some point and his people would be worse off than NK" What about destabilizing the area "that's THEIR fault, it was up to America to oust Saddam it was up to the Iraqi's to support the Democracy we put in place".
This is not what I think, just what people who I have talked to have said to me when I asked.
To be fair there are plenty of people who feel that way today as well. Human beings are very bad at thinking more than a couple of steps ahead when it comes to behaviour. A lot of people still don't see the connection between the invasion and the massive increase in terrorism from the middle east. It's two separate events, and the latter often justifies the former.
Look at how simplistically people have broken World War 1 down into bad Germans doing bad things and how many are completely unaware of the obscenely complex treaties that caused that event. Or, indeed, aware that Germany actually didn't start world war 1 at all, it was technically the serbians.
Saddam is bad = Saddam being taken down is good ergo war to take down Saddam must be good.
The argument "Yes he's bad, but everyone else is worse or at least as bad and the entire region is being stabilised by him" is too difficult.
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On August 28 2018 22:27 farvacola wrote:
One of the biggest splits among Dems and those who want to pull the party leftward deals in the party's attitude towards war. Far too many Dems spare the military industrial complex from much needed criticism and reigning in.
The military industrial complex had done an amazing job of linking it’s funding and support to the rank and file troops. They see funding for the military as funding for them and their pay check. On to of that, the military industrial complex represents a lot of voters, being the largest government employer.
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On August 28 2018 23:05 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 28 2018 22:27 farvacola wrote:
One of the biggest splits among Dems and those who want to pull the party leftward deals in the party's attitude towards war. Far too many Dems spare the military industrial complex from much needed criticism and reigning in. The military industrial complex had done an amazing job of linking it’s funding and support to the rank and file troops. They see funding for the military as funding for them and their pay check. On to of that, the military industrial complex represents a lot of voters, being the largest government employer.
It gets even weirder. People see supporting a war as supporting troops. There are parents that believed someone being against the Iraq war, where their kid would get shot to death, was them not supporting their child.
"Look dude, I'm saying it would be great if your kid didn't die."
"How fucking dare you deny my son the right to die in glorious combat!"
It's incredibly sad. It is such a bizarre twisting of perspective and it is downright abhorrent the way parents of soldiers have been manipulated.
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United States24732 Posts
Even my high school classmates made that distinction: “I support our troops but not this war” was commonly repeated.
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Hurricane Maria Caused 2,975 Deaths In Puerto Rico, Independent Study Estimates
Independent researchers from the George Washington University have estimated that Hurricane Maria caused 2,975 deaths in Puerto Rico in the six months following the storm.
The researchers' findings had been long-awaited. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello commissioned the independent study in February, after months of public pressure over his administration's failure to adequately count the number of hurricane dead. At the time, he said the research team would have the Puerto Rican government's full cooperation, including access to all mortality data.
The new number represents a 22 percent increase over the number of deaths Puerto Rico would have expected during that six-month period had a hurricane not struck, researchers found. They also said those most at risk for death were poor people, and the elderly.
"The results of our epidemiological study suggest that, tragically, Hurricane Maria led to a large number of excess deaths throughout the island," Carlos Santos-Burgoa, the study's lead researcher, said in a statement. "We hope this report and its recommendations will help build the island's resilience and pave the way toward a plan that will protect all sectors of society in times of natural disasters."
Since December, the government's official hurricane death toll has been stuck at 64, though the government has acknowledged that number was likely far too low and would be adjusted once the researchers had completed their study.
It was unclear whether the island's government would adopt the researchers' estimate as its official toll. A spokesman for Gov. Rossello said the governor would speak at a Tuesday afternoon press conference.
In addition to their new death count estimate, the researchers found that the Puerto Rican government did a poor job communicating with the public about the death count, and more broadly did not have an adequate disaster communications plan in place, which the researchers said contributed to public confusion.
According to interviews that researchers said they conducted with health and forensics officials on the island, many were also uninformed about how to document hurricane-related deaths.
In the absence of a rigorous effort by Puerto Rico's government to count its dead, several media outlets and outside researchers worked to arrive at their own figures. Most recently, Harvard University researchers published a study that estimated the number of hurricane-related deaths likely ranged from about 800 to 8,000.
That study had a wide margin of error because it was based on household surveys. The George Washington researchers said their findings are more accurate because they are based on access to government mortality data and death certificates, and account for variables including the number of people believed to have left Puerto Rico after the hurricane.
Source
The long and short of the studies surrounding the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico is that we may never know how many people died in that storm and the weeks after, but it was likely in the thousands. As we bail out small groups of farmers in the president’s trade war, Puerto Rico is left to fend for itself without much aid from the government. A section of America we, as a nation, ignore because they have no political power and we can’t be bothered to spend the nominal amount of money to help them. And we are dumping all that money into running private child abuse camps.
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On August 29 2018 03:18 micronesia wrote:
Even my high school classmates made that distinction: “I support our troops but not this war” was commonly repeated.
Since war makes troops stop breathing, the distinction shouldn't need to be made. Supporting a war means dead troops. When I typically think of "supporting" someone, I don't normally advocate for situations where that someone dies.
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EPT
