In the “do people ever learn” department, Americans are currently scared of terrorism and therefore leaning toward support for more of the same policies that destabilized the Middle East:
For the first time in CNN/ORC polling, a majority of Americans (53%) say the U.S. should send ground troops to Iraq or Syria to fight ISIS. At the same time, 6-in-10 disapprove of the President's handling of terrorism and 68% say America's military response to the terrorist group thus far has not been aggressive enough. [...]
On ground troops, 36% of leaned Democrats think the United States should send ground troops into combat operations against ISIS forces in Iraq or Syria, compared with 69% of leaned Republicans.
While most Americans are reticent for the country to take a leading role on international issues, isolationist sentiment has faded since last fall. More now say the U.S. should take the leading role among all other countries in the world in trying to solve international problems (45% now compared with 39% in September 2014).
(That’s support for the U.S. taking the leading role in trying to solve international problems other than the Syrian refugee crisis. Americans are pretty solidly against the U.S. doing even a small share on that front.)
Here’s my question: If you favor ground troops now, were you one of the 70 percent or so of Americans who favored war in Iraq back in 2003? How did you feel about that war, say, five years later? Does that contrast not give you even a hint of second thoughts about your current “rah, ground troops” position? (Yeah, I didn’t think so.)