Posted by Shelley Batts on October 10, 2006 PollingPoint.com, a national polling network, has recently published the results of a recent survey on the opinions of Americans on the Iraq war, which were generally negative. 61% believe that “no progress has been made in Iraq and things would have been better without the war,” however 82% of Democrats and 24% of Republicans feel this way. 66% of Republicans have a somewhat favorable view of the war, compared to 12% of Democrats. Results are below:
What is expected supposed to mean? If I had “expected” it would be a disaster all along I could vote that way. Or if I expected it would work out OK, and am still fooling myself…
This was taken to meant “its going as well as could be expected.” Which must means your expectations are pretty low.
Shelley: Which is pretty funny, because any of us who were around at the time will remember that *before* the war– well, up until a couple months to a year after the invasion “succeeded”, really– Republican expectations for the war were way, way higher than those that the rest of us were voicing…
Republican expectations for the war were way, way higher than those that the rest of us were voicing…
True enough, but the people that where not borderline fruit loops to start with still figured that it “should” be possible to produce some sort of reasonable outcome, while disagreeing on just what the time frame should be to expect it in (some had such unrealistic expectations you have to wonder if the only thing they new about wars and dictatorships came from Hollywood movies and episodes of 21). The problem is, both sides have now largerly become an echo chamber imho. The left is still regurgitating BS from years ago to prove that “today” everything is going wrong. The right is still ignoring the obvious stupidity of many of their choices because they can’t get it through their heads that, “God wouldn’t let me be wrong!”, is *not* a valid method of deriving military strategy. The reality is that maybe a year ago we had a critical moment, in which, despite all the other screwups, we needed these things:
1. More troops.
2. Some way to secure the borders better.
3. Help from all the imbicils that want the US to fail so they can say, “See, the people in our country knew it was a mistake, that’s why we never lifted… umm, refused to get involved.”
4. A more forceful push into securing Baghdad and to help Iraq form a stable defense.
Instead we got:
1. Less troops, since Bush didn’t think we needed them.
2. Completely open borders with every lunatic in sight coming over them with Iranian, Syrian and Saudi made weapons (which of course none of them had a clue where they got them from…)
3. Nations pulling *out* their troops.
4. External enemies staging even more clever tricks to try to incite civil war.
5. Some Iraqis actually funding sectarian squads, which only added to the mess.
and finally, 6. “Real”, but relatively sporatic at first, civil war style conflicts, many of them incited by unknown groups that, as one Iraqi whose blog I read described it: “A group claiming to be a militia would show up, tell everyone in the neighborhood that Shia or Sunni death squads where coming, which ever was the opposite of those in the neighborhood, and that they where there to protect them. A few days later these protectors would suddenly disappear, *then* the death squads would actually show up, looking for the militia that had vanished, and taking out its anger on the locals.”
Yeah. I remember that happening all the time in the American Civil war. Oh wait…. No, as far as I know that *never* happened in any *real* civil war. It is the kind of shit you might expect if someone is “still”, and this was as of about two weeks ago, trying to incite one that isn’t sufficiently destructive, quite as wide spread, or as effective at taking down the new government, as they would “like” it to be.
Seriously, this isn’t “all” Bush’s fault. Maybe 70% of it, but a whole hell of a lot of it has been a result of selfish political BS from supposed allies, apathy on the part of too many others, and an almost incomprehensible inability of some people from day one to imagine “success” to be anything other that instant progress with no mistakes of failures at all. Really, try reading the current rants and comparing them to the first year, I’ll bet you mostly can’t tell the difference, except in the number of people claiming they knew all along it was a disaster. And I have *yet* to hear any of those people so much as try to say what “success” would have been, other than something so unrealistic that the only place it could have happened would have been in an episode of Power Rangers or maybe GI Joe.
I have lost all sense of humor with respect to *both* parties, and not just on this issue.
“God wouldn’t let me be wrong!”, is *not* a valid method of deriving military strategy.
I just shit a 24k gold brick.
Does this poll then mean that 90% of Democrats expected the war to work?
October 10, 2006
October 10, 2006
October 10, 2006
October 10, 2006
October 15, 2006