17 Jul U.S. Resolve in WW II — and in Iraq
Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall nicely debunks the tired right-wing talking point on Iraq that if there had been opinion polling during WW II, we would have seen support for the war drop every time the U.S. military suffered a setback. As it turns out, such opinion polling did exist — and nothing could be further from the truth:
A larger version of the chart can be found here.
Most revealing, I think, is the close connection between the percentage of people who approved of the way FDR was handling his job and the percentage of people who said they had a clear idea what the war was about. As WW II demonstrates, the American people are willing to make enormous sacrifices for a cause they understand and believe is winnable; what they are not willing to do — something that still hasn’t dawned on the Bush administration — is waste precious lives and resources to wage a war that no one knows how to win, not least because winning itself remains completely undefined.
(As an historical aside, note the understandable home-team bias in the polling: before U.S. troops landed in North Africa as part of Operation Torch, only 33% of Americans believed that the Allies would win the war; after they landed — on November 8, 1942 — that number shot up to more than 80%!)
There are certain unique qualifiers that place further distance between WWII and the venture in Iraq: 1. In WWII, a universal military draft existed that swept up a significant portion of young US males, above and beyond the genuine enthusiasm for enlisting. The dangers were shared across the socio-economic spectrum of the nation’s citizens. 2. In WWII, the United States rationed almost all consumer and industrial commodities as well as collected, in variously-styled “drives” those items that were generated in the expenditure of consumer and industrial commodities as well as materials deemed surplus to true needs. 3. In WWII, the United States imposed economic thresholds for various social and industrial activities, particularly travel. Sales of war bonds and other economic savings incentives were employed and participation was garnerer as an exercise in personal and societal patriotism. 4. In WWII, there was a true and legitimate sense of fear from the realization that three governments possessed military capabilities for introducing death and destruction upon the United States as both a political entity as well as a social institution. Therefore, there was incredible national impetus to forge ahead, no matter how grievous setbacks might be. 5. In WWII the political leadership, with… Read more »
I thought a draft was a bad thing? Today’s soldiers and marines are VOLUNTEERS. A draft, as historically used, would disproportionately affect middle-class and lower middle-class men. Today’s military is of a higher socio-economic and education level than the general public and are not majority inner-city (they weren’t in Vietnman either) poor or minorities, etc. Do the rotations need to be fixed? yes. The better model for this conflict is not WW2, but the “small wars” talked about by Max Boot (cue evil neocon music here — even though he’s not a neocon) in Savage Wars of Peace. The Phillipines of 1900 (not the tactics, but the general idea of the conflict) is a better model than WW2. Bush should let the Marines do what they do best — fight and win small wars and counter-insurgency. I would also question the prior post’s idea that 3 gov’t could rain death and destruction — or even the fear of it. By 1943 that idea was pretty much dead. Even then it applied only mostly to the Japanese right after Pearl Harbor and the Aleutians adventure. FDR caught a lot of flak to be sure and I agree with your general premise… Read more »