Poll: Many now saying war has left U.S. no safer

By Dick Polman

Bedeviled by the mounting casualties in Iraq and increasingly confused by the mixed messages emanating from war leaders, Americans in large numbers are losing confidence in the mission.

New polls report that, for the first time, a majority of Americans reject President Bush’s contention that the war over there is making us safer over here. Indeed, barring major immediate progress in Iraq, 2005 may well be remembered as the year when public opinion went south and never came back — a mood shift roughly analogous to 1968, when domestic confidence in the Vietnam War began its irreversible slide.

There has long been public frustration about the gap between administration pronouncements and battlefield realities; witness Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s prewar prediction that the fighting could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months,'' or the fact that 92 percent of U.S. military deaths have occurred since Bush declared May 1, 2003, thatmajor combat’’ was over.

Former war backers

But for a long time, the restive Americans tended to be Democrats who already disliked Bush or who never accepted his war rationales in the first place. What’s new today is that frustrations about the war are being voiced by those who backed the mission at the outset. These Americans — as evidenced in interviews by reporters from Texas to New York City during the past week — are increasingly alarmed by events in Iraq and confused about the best course of action.

Consider Pennsylvanian Eric Zagata. He is from Luzerne, Pa., age 24, and he served in Iraq last year, as a member of the 109th Field Artillery’s Bravo Battery, until he was injured by shrapnel. He was luckier than the 92 Pennsylvanians slain thus far — in battle deaths, Pennsylvania ranks third in the nation, behind California and Texas — but he’s a changed man.

Going into it,'' he said,I just felt it was my obligation. Now I feel bad. I think we’re in such a spot. We can’t pull out of there because if we do, it would just be a waste of all our people’s lives and all their people’s lives.’’

His sentiments shifted after seeing all these guys getting killed every day for nothing, really.''We went over there and we’re fighting this war, and we’re still paying $2.40 a gallon for gas,’’ he said. Eighteen-hundred people have died, and nothing has been accomplished.'' (The U.S. military death toll, on Saturday, was 1,847.) Or consider 54-year-old Marcy Price, who was shopping Thursday near Fort Jackson, the U.S. Army's largest basic-training center, in South Carolina. She backed the war at the outset, becauseI thought that it was very worthwhile — that it was something we needed to do in response to 9/11.’’

However, she said, I changed my mind because of the length of the war'' and because, as she sees it, the Bush administration has failed to show that Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, was a crucial front in the broader fight against terrorism. These sentiments are reflected in the polling trends. When the war was a year old, in March 2004, roughly 65 percent of Americans were supporting the decision to wage it. But in the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, support has sagged to 44 percent. Meanwhile, 57 percent now say the war has made the United Statesless safe from terrorism’’ — a Gallup record high and a key finding because it undercuts a core Bush argument for launching the war.

Retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, an expert on war and public opinion who teaches at Boston University, said: At this point, the president has nearly exhausted the extra moral authority that he was granted after 9/11. It's hard for people to accept battlefield deaths when they can't see where a war is going.''In comparison to World War II,’’ he said, 1,846 deaths is obviously not huge. But in the context of Iraq, with the public having no clear sense of how the mission is going and where it will go -- that's why support is systematically eroding.People thought we’d turned a corner’’ when Saddam Hussein was captured and again when the January elections were held,'' he said.People keep waiting for some psychic satisfaction, the big milestone that will point the way forward.’’

Many have grown weary of waiting. Debby Boarman, a 58-year-old retiree from Evansville, Ind., voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, but you would never know it now. During a visit Wednesday to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., she said: I don't think he's doing as good a job as he said he was going to do. I don't like the way he is handling Iraq -- well, he isn't handling it. . . . It's more of a lack thereof.'' Supporter remain Bush, of course, can still count on staunch support from millions of Americans, people such as Greg Henning, an Ohioan who was visiting ground zero in New York on Tuesday.If we had done this in the 1990s,’’ he said, Sept. 11 wouldn’t have happened. He sees the Iraq casualties as an acceptable sacrifice, because if thousands of soldiers hadn't died'' in other wars,we wouldn’t have been here right now’’ living in freedom.

And notwithstanding the attention focused on Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, who is camping out at Bush’s ranch to protest her son’s death in Iraq, there are many women like Diane Eggers, a 51-year-old Bush voter from Euless, Texas, whose son Kyle was killed last December. She said: He supported President Bush because he believed in what Bush was doing. There's no good part of any war. . . . You just have to go with it. I could be mad, but it's not going to do any good.'' But even some Bush-loving Texans are restless. Donna Arp, 54, of Colleyville, the president of a real estate investment company, said Wednesday,I’d like to see a solid exit strategy,’’ because she and her friends can’t get a fix on what’s happening. As she put it, We're unsure if we are winning the war or where we are with it.'' Saturday, Bush again dampened any talk of foreseeable troop cuts --I think it would be a big mistake to withdraw immediately from Iraq, which is what they’re suggesting we do’’ — a message that suggests that the insurgency may not be losing steam'' after all, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week. Seeking a `clear plan' The public's growing bewilderment stems in part from the perception that Bush and his war leaders are communicating poorly, and often in contradiction. In the latest poll conducted by the non-partisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 64 percent say Bush is failing to articulate aclear plan’’ for winning the war, the highest negative share since the start of the conflict.

In Bacevich’s words, In the absence of the president making a persuasive case, many people don't know how to judge what's going on there.'' David Winston, a Washington Republican strategist who has worked with the White House, was asked about the Bush administration message on Iraq. He didn't state directly that the current message is flawed, but he seemed to imply it:Over the next year, people will ask, `Are we progressing?’ ’’

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