Iraq War Polls

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Iraq War Polls

James Joyner | Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Kevin Drum notes a strange paradox in the public opinion polling on Iraq:

[I]n every poll taken for the past three years, we’ve seen basically the same results: (a) a majority wants to leave Iraq within one or two years, and (b) almost nobody wants to leave right now. So where will all those people who want to leave within a year or two be when pollsters ask this question again in 2008? Most likely answer: they’ll still want to leave within a year or two and they still won’t want to leave right now.

I think that’s right. Essentially, people hold two contradictory thoughts in their head on this one:

They want American soldiers to stop getting killed now.
They don’t want to lose the war, even if they think getting in was a mistake.

So long as there’s hope of winning — however one defines that — the second will continue to trump the first.

Photo: China Daily/Reuters via Google Images.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.

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