Americans Say U.S. Is Losing War

by Peter Baker and Jon Cohen - December 13, 2006 - Washington Post

Nearly eight in 10 Americans favor changing the U.S. mission in Iraq from direct combat to training Iraqi troops, the Washington Post-ABC News survey found. Sizeable majorities agree with the goal of pulling out nearly all U.S. combat forces by early 2008, engaging in direct talks with Iran and Syria and reducing U.S. financial support if Iraq fails to make enough progress.

Yet neither President Bush nor Democratic leaders who will take over Congress in three weeks have embraced the panel's report since it was released last week.

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The dichotomy between the public's support for the plan and the Washington establishment's ambivalence illustrates the complex political environment as Bush searches for a new strategy in a war that has outlasted U.S. involvement in World War II. A war-weary public appears hungry for ideas that would represent a major change, but political leaders remain uncertain whether the plan's proposals would improve the situation.

A war-weary public? I think that is an honest summing up of the American public's reaction to this war. Ask anyone on the street and you get an opinion we are taking "unacceptable" casualties. The American public wants out of the war. Ask anyone who started this war and the majority say we started it. They have accepted that it was an optional war.

The American public does not believe that there is truly a threat from islamofascism. The American public is convinced that we are torturing prisoners at Quantanamo. The American public is convinced there is no difference between "water-boarding" a known terrorist leader to find out their plans to kill us and the islamofascists sawing off the head of an innocent civilian who has no knowledge of any plans we have about anything. Yep. Absolutely no difference to the average American. They are appalled and want us to stop defending ourselves unless we can be "nice" to the islamofacists.

Lets get back to that war-weary public. At least part of the problem is that the average American thinks that we are evil for using atomic bombs to end World War II. I conducted a small poll this week. With outrageous ignorance of the death toll on Iwo Jima, and complete indifference to the probable death toll of one half million to one million American lives if we invaded Japan, the democrats and independents I talked to for my poll still think we should not have used the atomic bombs to end World War II.

These are the same people who think that the current death toll in the war on islamofascism is excessive. That FIVE YEAR death toll by the way is still 1,000 lives less than the ONE WEEK death toll on Iwo Jima. If the current American public had been the public of World War II, Amercans would now be speaking German or Japanese. Their rejection of reality is nearly complete. Wishful thinking is accepted as completely okay.

Our nation has lost its way. Our political parties are insanely partisan and are completely indifferent to the consequences of losing the current war against the islamofascists. Our political parties are focused on elections. The medium term expectation by those who understand the islamofascist threat is that Israel is going to experience nuclear bombs destroying Tel Aviv. Shortly thereafter we will see nuclear bombs in Washington and New York. No one will even talk about why that is so. We have become the most short sighted and narcicistic nation on earth. The threat is simply ignored.

The price we will pay for that ignorance is awful, and not one of the people who are bringing it about will ever believe it is their fault.