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Pres. Obama is giving the impression everyone shared his lack of hope on Iraq. The data doesn't support the claim.
President Obama recently repeated his campaign claim that we succeeded in Iraq "beyond all expectations", this time before a group of Marines at Camp Lejeune. According to past polls, most of those Marines were probably thinking "better than your expectations, maybe". Many people feared that Congress would create failure through a premature pull-out, but success was likely otherwise. Pres. Obama is misinterpreting a lack of confidence in politician's resolve as a lack of confidence in the mission.
If you look at the data expectations of success were usually the majority, with a dip occurring during the worst parts of the Al-Qaeda counter-attack, before the surge had begun. Even at it's worst the hope for success couldn't be described as beyond anyone's expectations. Let's look at the data.
At the outset of the war, of course, the vast majority of the American public and their political leaders supported the war and felt it would succeed.
But even two years later, according to a Pew Research center poll done in late 2005, a majority of the public thought efforts to establish a stable democracy would succeed. 64% of the military thought so. Only so-called 'opinion leaders' didn't think we would succeed.
Unfortunately, they did lead the opinion and a year later the majority had turned pessimistic. Al-Qaeda saw that American will was weak and fought a classic insurgency with the opposition's media as its primary target. But even then, with things at their worst, large groups of Iraqis felt the war could be won. The annual Brookings Iraq index shows that 47% of Iraqis thought the country was headed in the right direction in late 2006. Not a majority, but it can hardly be said that no one expected success. During this same period of minimal hope, 50% of the military thought we would succeed, with only 41% thinking we would not. The numbers quickly went up as the surge progressed.
President Obama is trying to re-write the history of his own mistake after the fact by proclaiming that everyone agreed with him. That is simply not true. He was in the majority, but never one as large as he implies and he was never in agreement with the people who knew best, the US military and the Iraqi people. Many people expected victory in Iraq, they just weren't sure if the war's American opponents would allow it to happen.
Perhaps Pres. Obama should describe the Iraq victory as succeeding "beyond all expectations of a small minority, and beyond the average hopes of the uninformed". That would be more accurate, and more audacious.
JTNichols
3/2/2009 12:10:00 PM
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