Kevin Drum notes a strange paradox in the public opinion polling on Iraq:
[I]n every poll taken for the past three years, we’ve seen basically the same results: (a) a majority wants to leave Iraq within one or two years, and (b) almost nobody wants to leave right now. So where will all those people who want to leave within a year or two be when pollsters ask this question again in 2008? Most likely answer: they’ll still want to leave within a year or two and they still won’t want to leave right now.
I think that’s right. Essentially, people hold two contradictory thoughts in their head on this one:
- They want American soldiers to stop getting killed now.
- They don’t want to lose the war, even if they think getting in was a mistake.
So long as there’s hope of winning — however one defines that — the second will continue to trump the first.
Photo: China Daily/Reuters via Google Images.
