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Saturday, March 25, 2006

The American antiwar movement

The literary plutocrats of the punditocracy have been wracking their brains lately to make sense of the antiwar movement in America. Partly because they equate "movement" with street demonstrations, they are genuinely surprised that the Iraq War has become so incredibly unpopular. Gosh, how could the Big Pundits possibly have predicted that a war launched to great fanfare to find "weapons of mass destruction" that allegedly threatened a "mushroom cloud" in an American city any day, that a war like that would become terribly unpopular when it turned out that the justification for war was, like, totally bogus?

How could it be, that after years of turning points and tipping points and endless optimistic predictions from the trustworthy Bush administration and an unbroken string of pronouncements of progress and victories and insurgents killed and weapons captured from our infallible generals, why, why, why would the war become so unpopular?

The Iraq War and the general militarization of foreign and domestic policies committed by the Bush administration under the rubric of the GWOT (global war on terrorism) has exposed some serious, deep-rooted problems in American society. And while the Republicans rave on about the Liberal Press Conspiracy, some of the real weaknesses of the mainstream press have been laid bare for those in the "reality-based community" who are willing to look at them. The best shorthand to describe them? Judith Miller.

It's a major sign of the dysfunction of our Potemkin "press corps" that one of the more sensible commentators on the Iraq War has been Chris Matthews, widely known as "Tweety" in Liberal Blogostan. Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby has been one of Tweety's most severe critics, citing him as one of the worst "journalists" in the business. But Somerby gives him credit on the war.

Somerby's been harshing on liberal bloggers for the last year or so, and his commentary on that topic can be faulted for failing to fully appreciate the difference between news-and-politics blogging in general - is anyone calling it "blogism" yet? - and news journalism. But he has a decent point in criticizing bloggers for being careless in assuming that because Tweety is generally useless across the board on most issues, his commentary on the Iraq War is an exception.

On Friday, the Howler wrote:

Matthews says a lot of utterly foolish, embarrassing things; [Todd] Gitlin has a long list of them in his piece. ([Tweety's] abject fawning to Giuliani continued last night, although Gitlin skips this embarrassing theme - understandably, since he had many to choose from.) But more and more, the liberal web and liberal journals have begun to cherry-pick and distort claims in the way the pseudo-conservative world has done for these past many years. And the progression concerning Matthews has been especially weird. When Matthews was an unvarnished, unalloyed nightmare for Dems, the liberal world stared into space and said nothing. Now that he presents a weirdly mixed bag, we have begun to complain - and to put our thumbs hard on the scale as we do. Media Matters gimmicks a pointless complaint from a program where Matthews went after Bush hard. And Gitlin betrays no real idea of what Matthews has done for three years.

Matthews says a lot of embarrassing things. In the past few years, he has fawned to Republicans on personality issues - while going after Bush's defining policy [the Iraq War]. But then again, what about us? Do we have to be so much like the crackpots we all used to criticize? Can't libs and progressives be a bit smarter? Or are we really just secret Sean Hannitys, deep in our cherry-pickin' souls?

Meanwhile, despite the astonishing derilection of duty by most of what Robert Dreyfuss called the "press corpse" the other day, there's an honest-to-gosh antiwar movement with widespread support. And, yes, it does include demonstrations, too. Lisa Söderlindh reports in "Troops Home" Call Echoes Across U.S. Inter Press Service 03/24/06:

"The most important thing coming out from this week is that the activities happened all across the U.S.," Hany Khalil of United for Peace and Justice, one of the largest anti-war groups here, told IPS. "It reflects that the peace movement really has been mainstreamed."

Anti-war demonstrations in the United States have drawn fewer participants than just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, but the wide range of local activities "is far more important than one giant demonstration", Phyllis Bennis of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies said at an anti-war conference Monday.

The nationwide events are "an example of an ongoing opposition to a war that the American people, more than the U.S. administration, and even more than the Congress, understand has no legitimacy left", she said.

Iraq War veterans are taking a more and more visible role in actively opposing the Bush war policies. Also something to remember for the long term, when jingo Republicans will accuse the antiwar movement of stigmatizing "all soldiers" as "baby-killers and torturers" or some other variation of the whiny white-folks claim that the jingoes will come up with.

Citing the renowned civil rights and political activist Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who spoke out against the Vietnam War at a rally in New York in April 1967, Iraq veteran Geoffrey Millard said "a time comes when silence is betrayal", and that time has "now come for the U.S. in relation to the war in Iraq".

Millard served in Iraq for 13 months. "I just happened to be a dumb 17-year-old kid who only needed his mom's permission to go to the war," he said at a town hall meeting in New York Tuesday, adding that it ended up being the biggest mistake of his life.

Söderlind has the highest figure I've seen yet on the nubmer of Iraqi civilians likely to have been killed:

Since the Iraq invasion, more than 150,000 Iraqi civilians are estimated to have been killed, and some figures point to 200,000. More than 2,000 U.S. soldiers have died, and some 15,000 have been wounded, according to the latest figures reported by the U.S. Defence Department.

The PBS Newshour, which is far from the hotbed of incidiary liberal agitation that the residents of OxyContinLand imagine it to be, ran a decent segment on Friday featuring four Iraq War veterans: Veterans Discuss Iraq 03/24/06. One of Margaret Warner's guests, Marine Corps Captain Nathaniel Fick, who she idetifies as "a platoon commander in both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars", took on the accusation made by the President and Republican jingoes that criticism of Bush's war policies or of our infallible generals is somehow damaging the fighting morale of American military units in Iraq and thereby endangering their lives. Fick debunked the charge by referring to the realities of combat motiviation:

I think there are two factors at play here.

First of all, the active-duty members of the U.S. military are professional volunteers. And as such, they swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the president, or a policy, or an administration. And they swear to obey the lawful orders of the democratically elected government, full-stop.

And so public opinion doesn't affect them very much. When I was in Iraq, we listened on a shortwave radio to protests in Washington and in London, and we had our own opinions about the justice or injustice of the war, but as an active-duty serving member of the U.S. Military, that doesn't matter.

The second factor is that this opposition to the war, growing opposition, is very passive in nature because the war simply doesn't affect many American citizens. During Vietnam, for instance, you saw college campuses as hotbeds of activism. Right now, they're islands of apathy, because most people really aren't affected.

So the opposition becomes sort of a knee-jerk, popular thing to do, or say, or believe. It's not true analysis. And so I think that that's disheartening, and it speaks of a wide civil-military divide in our society. (my emphasis)

Combat morale and motivation is not exactly an obscure subject, given the role that war has played in the history of our very flawed human race. As a general rule, unit cohesion is the critical factor in maintaining morale in actual combat.

The general well-functioning of the military organization is also critical. This is why the Bush administration's torture policy, which has obviously been implemented and tolerated by important elements of the officer corps despite it's illegality and sadistic cruelty, would be a serious internal problem for the armed services even if the Bush war policies themselves were wildly popular at home.

Another of Warner's guests, Kelly Dougherty, "co-founder and southwest coordinator of Iraq Veterans Against the War", described the current state of the antiwar movement in this comment, which shows an appreciation for the fact that demonstrations are a part of the movement and an important part, but not all of the movement by any means:

Well, I just got back from a march from Mobile, Alabama, to New Orleans with hurricane survivors and veterans to call attention to the Iraq war and the effects that it's having on our own communities here in the United States. And we had a large number of Iraq veterans against the war, plus veterans from other conflicts, the most that we've had together in one place.

And I think we're all hopeful that, because of the turning viewpoints - not only among the American public, but among soldiers in Iraq, 72 percent of which who were polled said that they think there should be a complete withdrawal within the next year - that this will help speed the end of this conflict, because already we have over 2,300 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis who have been killed because of our involvement in Iraq.

So to me, it's heartening, but polls don't necessarily turn into tangible conclusions and actions.

I don't see Ruy Teixeira's Donkey Rising blog cited that much in news blogs lately. I'm not quite sure why, because he writes some of the clearest and most sensible analyses of political polling results that I see anywhere. In The Iraq War, Three Years On 03/22/06, he gives us an important comparison of the current antiwar movement with that of the anti-Vietnam War movement, which did have lots of big demonstrations:

All very interesting. But perhaps the most interesting finding is this. Gallup asked a question that gave respondents four different options for dealing with the war in Iraq: "withdraw all troops from Iraq immediately, withdraw all troops by March 2007 - that is, in 12 months' time, withdraw troops, but take as many years to do this as are needed to turn control over to the Iraqis, or send more troops to Iraq?" The response is a clear majority (54 percent) for withdrawing all troops within a year, with 19 percent wanting immediate withdrawal and another 35 percent favoring withdrawal by March, 2007.

That seems pretty clear. And how about this other fact provided by Gallup. In early August, 1970, Gallup asked the same question about the Vietnam War, giving respondents the same four options and found 48 percent wanted to either leave immed1ately (23 percent) or within a year (25 percent). In other words, there is stronger sentiment now for leaving Iraq within a year than there was about leaving Vietnam within a year in 1970, after the killings at Kent State and at practically the height of antiwar movement.

Now that's impressive.

A couple of final thoughts about antiwar sentiment. It's a commonplace in market research that surveys are good at identifying what consumers see as problems that they want solved. But they are not good at identifying what would be the most marketable solutions. In other words, a survey could tell you that most consumers think a particular style of cell phone is ugly; but it couldn't produce precise descriptions of what the ideal alternative design would be that would get rid of the features producing the perception that its ugly.

That applies to attitudes toward war, too. The more instructive poll results in that regard are the ones that measure the depth of public dissatisfaction with the Iraq War. But asking the public to pick solutions gives a squishier result. So, for instance, unless the polling questions provide very clear definitions of the term, it doesn't mean much when respondents are asked whether they want the US to withdraw "quickly". For some people, "quickly" might mean two years. For others, a month.

That's why the Gallup poll comparison cited by Teixeira is so interesting. It asks the respondents to choose between concretely defined alternatives. And it can be benchmarked against comparable findings from the most intense period of anti-Vietnam War protest and antiwar activity.

Finally, I don't see much of the commentary on public antiwar sentiment taking real account of the very large antiwar demonstrations before the invasion of Iraq. That was really a remarkable outpouring of public sentiment against the war, and one which reflected very justified doubts about the false claims the Bush administration was using to justify the war. And this was before the Abu Ghuraib pictures, before the news of the massive warrantless domestic wiretapping program, before the Halliburton highway robbery, before the Valerie Plame outing, before Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress gave highly-sensitive intelligence to Iran.

I don't know if any professional study on this aspect of it has been done. But I assume that those massive prewar demonstrations were an important part of making people take a more critical look at the Iraq War and the claims of the administration and of our infallible generals after the invasion and the counterinsurgency war began. I just don't buy the argument that some writers make (Eric Alterman and Harold Meyerson among the more sensible of them) that antiwar demonstrations have the effect of increasing support for the war.

The argument is based on a mistaken understanding of the history of the anti-Vietnam War movement. Any active and visible movement is going to polarize opinions among the hardcore opposition. In fact, if you look at Bush's attacks on the press and the ferocity of Republican war supporters in demonizing war critics, we see the same phenomenon today. Opposing a war is going to piss off the supporters of the war. That's pretty obvious. That doesn't mean that actively opposing it is counterproductive to the antiwar cause, even if it doesn't reach today's state of a large majority rejecting the Bush war in Iraq.

Another idea that seems to have charmed the punditocracy is the notion that American casualties are the decisive feature in generating opposition to a war. This idea is associated with one of the genuine experts on war and public opinion, John Mueller, whose article The Iraq Syndrome Foreign Affairs Nov/Dec 2005 is widely cited. He argues:

American troops have been sent into harm's way many times since 1945, but in only three cases - Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq -- have they been drawn into sustained ground combat and suffered more than 300 deaths in action. American public opinion became a key factor in all three wars, and in each one there has been a simple association: as casualties mount, support decreases. Broad enthusiasm at the outset invariably erodes.

The only thing remarkable about the current war in Iraq is how precipitously American public support has dropped off. Casualty for casualty, support has declined far more quickly than it did during either the Korean War or the Vietnam War. And if history is any indication, there is little the Bush administration can do to reverse this decline.

He's right about the latter claim, that, as the song says, "when it's gone, it won't be back again". (The song being "When It's Gone".) But his claim that it's American casualties as such that is the only meaningful reason for this hasn't convinced me, to put it mildly.

In the WorldPublicOpinion.org poll cited by Teixeira in the post linked above, the findings don't conform with Mueller's argument:

Support for drawing down US troops does not appear to be related to the growing number of US troop fatalities. The strongest factor appears to be the perception that the presence of US troops provokes more attacks, followed by the lack of confidence that the operation will ultimately succeed. (my emphasis)

That one is worth bookmarking in our minds. The stab-in-the-back crowd will be eager to claim that the wimpy public folded on the war because we're wussies about casualties.

More seriously, a great deal of the military's current approach to warfare is based heavily on the assumption that the US public is generally casualty-averse, regardless of the purpose of a conflict. This is a major reason why our infallible generals have such a heavy preference for massive bombing and heavily reliance on artillery, even in limited encounters in counterinsurgency conditions.

I would argue that public aversion to casualties is decisively related to general perceptions of the value or justice of the war in question. All wars are popular during the first few weeks. The human inclination to "us against them" thinking in crisis situations guarantees that. But however normal it may seem to war profiteers, infallible generals or Big Pundits to have soldiers killing and dying for causes bearing no reasonable relationship to national safety, over time most people don't think so. In the end, the biggest benefit of democracy may be that, even with an all-volunteer military, those who decide on wars have to account for their decisions to the general public.

Here are some more details from the WorldPublicOpinion.org study:

A common view is that it is the rising number of US troop fatalities that is prompting the public’s desire to disengage. If so, it would follow that those who believe that the number of US troop fatalities is relatively high would be more eager to withdraw than those that have relatively low estimates. But this does not appear to be the case.

The public overall is fairly accurate in its estimate of American troop fatalities to date. During the week the poll was in the field, the number of fatalities most commonly disseminated in the media was about 2,300, with approximately 1,800 of these due to hostile fire. The median estimate was 2,000 fatalities due to hostile fire, and 45 percent gave a roughly accurate estimate - between 1,700 and 2,500.

Comparing those who estimated below 1,700 fatalities and those who estimated above 2,500 fatalities, the numbers wanting to withdraw all US troops within six months were not significantly different. The numbers wanting to reduce US troops were also no different (though those who estimated high were more likely to say that the US made the wrong decision in going to war with Iraq—64%, compared to 49% for those estimating below 1,700 fatalities).

A regression analysis reveals that the most powerful factors related to the desire to draw down US troops in Iraq is the perception that the US military presence is "provoking more conflict than it is preventing["]. Among those who believe that Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing, 43 percent favor reducing and 44 percent want to withdraw completely within six months. Among those who believe that the US presence is a stabilizing force, only 4 percent want to reduce troops and only 36 percent want to withdraw completely within six months.

Another key factor is the level of confidence that the Iraq operation will succeed. Among those with low confidence that the operation will succeed, 44 percent want to reduce US troops and 40 percent want to withdraw completely within six months. Among those with high confidence, 31 percent want to reduce and just 5 percent want to withdraw completely within six months. (my emphasis)

This latter point is one of the key assumptions behind Bush's current PR campaign for his war policies. As Juan Cole explains:

There is no great secret about why Bush is so eager to deny that Iraq is in a state of civil war. He knows only too well that the moment Americans come to believe that Iraq is in a civil war, virtually all support for Bush's war of choice will end. As the Washington Post reported nine months ago, Bush's domestic political spin on the war is guided by the work of two Duke University political scientists, Peter D. Feaver and Christopher F. Gelpi, who have examined public opinion on Iraq and previous conflicts. They argue that the U.S. public will only support wars if it believes the mission will succeed. Public support for the Iraq war has faltered because the American people cannot see progress toward a well defined goal and toward success. If Iraq really has fallen into civil war, there is obviously little hope for victory, and Americans are not going to want to go on spending $60 billion a year on a failed enterprise.

To prevent this from happening, Bush has been giving speeches and answering public questions, attempting to spin Iraq as a budding success story that just needs a little more time (along with the unstated further half-trillion dollars, and a few thousand more dead Americans) to succeed. Beyond that, the Bush administration has tried to reassure Americans that if Iraq did slip into anarchy, the U.S. wouldn't get drawn in. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld startled and dismayed many Iraqis by announcing that if Iraq did fall into what he called civil war, Iraqi forces would have to deal with it, while American troops stayed on the sidelines. During the sectarian disturbances after the al-Askari shrine bombing in Samarra, many thought U.S. troops had orders to remain in their barracks, lest they be sucked into the communal violence.

posted at 2:48:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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