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It Affects You
An ABC News/Washington Post poll was released yesterday showing Bush with a 45% approval rating - the lowest mark of his presidency on their poll. (Though he scored lower in recent days on other major polls - Gallup: 40%, Harris: 40%, Newsweek: 42%, AP/Ipsos: 42%.)
But what is more interesting is the difference between his approval ratings on Iraq and on the war on terror.
The poll of more than 1,000 people found that 57 percent disapprove of Bush's handling of the war and 68 percent regard the level of American casualties as unacceptable. [...]
Fifty-six percent approve of his work on terrorism, up from 50 percent in early June.
The growing realization among many Americans that the invasion of Iraq has been not only wrong but also terribly mishandled - from the lies which got us into an unnecessary war to the ever shifting rationale to the lack of planning to under supplying the troops - is reflected in the president's low ratings on Iraq. Somehow, defying logic, his numbers on the war on terror are still respectable if not spectacular.
The administration knows this, of course, and that is why they have put on the full court press to tie Iraq to the war on terror of late. (That is something I've written about many times over the last week or so - here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
They would like us to forget about Saddam and forget about WMDs, and just think that we have been fighting against terrorists since the start of the war. Any type of question about the war in Iraq will likely get an answer something like, "well, the president believes we must defeat the terrorists, and since we were attacked on our own soil on September 11, 2001 he has blah blah blah ...." See what they do there? Critics of the war in Iraq don't want to "defeat the terrorists" and we're in Iraq because we were attacked on 9/11. But that's the stuff of my other posts on the subject.
Seeing his low numbers on Iraq and his still decent numbers on the war on terror, no doubt his advisers are hoping by tying them together the higher approval numbers on terror will offset the opinion on Iraq. But this can and should backfire. The growing realization of not only how wrong the invasion of Iraq was, but also how damaging it has been to the war against terror will be the anchor which pulls both numbers down, possibly below the 40% mark.
The president is trying to frame the war in Iraq solely in terms of the war on terror. In the short run, it might give his numbers a boost. But every time he ties the two together, every time he talks of the need to fight terrorists in Iraq, he reminds people of just how Iraq came to the place it is today. He reminds people that Iraq has become terrorist training and recruiting grounds on a massive scale not in spite of but because of his policies. As he ties the war on terror to Iraq, people will realize that the failure in Iraq represents a massive failure in the war on terror, that he has broken the back of the counterterrorism effort.
Everytime he speaks of Iraq in the frame of the war against terror, the press needs to do their jobs and remind America of how it got that way. Democratic politicians need to do their jobs and remind America of how it got that way (as Wesley Clark did last Sunday.)
The war in Iraq has been disastrous to the war on terror. There can be no getting around that. As Bush ties the two together, he is only helping to drive home to Americans just what a failure he has been in fighting terror. His little gambit may backfire.
From It Affects You
