Polling in the USA

Matt Taibbi takes and infuriated look at polling in the United States. In it he makes an interesting discovery - that before the invasion of Iraq only 40% said they strongly supported it, another 40% supported it "either out of deference to the president or a sense of patriotism." Now after the invasion has gone horribly, horribly wrong 53% think it was "a mistake", which means 47% still think it was a good idea. As Matt points out, you can probably assume that means the 40% who thought it was a great idea before, still think its a great idea, and only 7% of the lemmings are still supporting the war. This really pisses him off. To cite his best words on the issue:

Which invites the question: If these people can't handle a few bad headlines, what exactly was their level of commitment to begin with? Pre-war polls, confined to the standard Coke-Pepsi either-or formula, didn't tell us much about that.

Maybe if the polls back then had been conducted differently, we might have had different results. Imagine a March 2003 poll that posed the following questions:

• Would you yank your son out of college and send him to die for this bullshit?
• Would you yourself be willing to give your life for this cause? If yes, grab your shit; there's a bus outside.

Those should be the only kinds of polls we allow, when it comes to questions of war. I mean, who the hell are these people who changed their minds once the news started to turn sour? There are only two explanations: They're either unbelievable cowards, or they didn't think it through. In either case, if there were any justice, they would all be rounded up and dumped buck-naked on the streets of Fallujah.

So basically he's making the point that people made up their minds about war as if they were voting for their favourite soda, or something equally banal. When it became clear that a war might actually have some consequences for them a lot of those 40% ended up flip-flopping. Concluding Matt writes:

But for all the poll respondent's smug airs, he only talks tough when he's in a crowd, and shielded by anonymity, identified only by his number. I've seen this myself as a journalist. Interview someone on the street, and he loves to hold forth and waste your time giving you his great opinion. But ask for his name for the record, and he runs away like a bitch.

A nation that indulges in anonymous casual cruelties like The Swan should not be consulted in the same manner before a war. In matters of life and death, stand up and be counted -- by name, swearing on the blood of your children. What kind of country goes to war whispering "yes" into a telephone?

I couldn't agree more!