Fox News Poll; Americans approve of “boots on the ground”
So Fox News commissioned a poll from two partisan pollsters; Anderson Robbins Research (D) / Shaw & Company Research (R).
They polled 1,049 registered voters between September 28 and 30th and 53% of them favored “adding U.S. ground troops to the fight against ISIS” while 41% opposed it. 73% of the polled folks said that the president hadn’t been tough enough on Islamic extremists. 58% said that they don’t think airstrikes alone will defeat ISIS, but that ground troops would do the job. 57% responded that the president hasn’t been aggressive enough.
A Gallup poll just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, 59% of Americans supported the use of troops to topple the Hussein regime. Five years later, they said that history will judge the Iraq War to be a failure, in March, 2013, Iraqis polled said that their security situation was better without American troops.
See, that’s why we need a leader, not a poll reader. American public opinion is fickle and not worth a cup of warm spit. Trying to govern by sticking a wet finger in the air will result in exactly the kind of foreign policy we have now – which is not a policy at all, but a series of knee-jerk reactions to impending crises.
I doubt very much that many of those polled are themselves in the military, or know someone in the military who would be deployed to Iraq in a combat role, so they’re voting with their emotions – ISIS bad, must kill, but me no kill. Me go mall, shop, drink $12 coffee, me feel better.
Category: Terror War
“ISIS bad, must kill, but me no kill. Me go mall, shop, drink $12 coffee, me feel better.”
Well said.
Welcome to the great NW!
Not a new sentiment, GT. A bit of sardonic humor going around Iraq when I was there: “The military went to war. America went to the mall.”
Governing by popularity contest never amounts to anything good… Jonn, you nail it amazingly well.
How many of those polled would lace up a pair of combat boots, strap on all the gear, and most importantly lay their own lives on the line for their beliefs?
I am not a fan of the Draft at all… but sometimes I wish that we could have it…People like writing the checks, let them cash them in.
This country needs a real leader in the worst possible way.
Are you ready boots?
They polled ;ess 1,100 out of 310 million in this country?
Oh, yeah – that’s REALLY an accurate poll. I don’t recall getting a phone call from them. Probably wouldn’t have answered it anyway. I think there was a much more accurate survey done in the 1970s when some researcher left questionnaires about men in regard to sex with prepaid return postage in bus stations all over the country.
I know what – we could start a Survey Monkey poll and everyone is invited to vote on several questions in regard to sending US troops back to the Middle East. I’m sure that, with enough modest PR, we’d get a much larger and more accurate result than anything the newspapers or TV stations can get.
I looked at the poll questions and results and, well, I learned all that I needed to learn when I saw that, among registered voters, in answer to the very first question, “Do you approve of the job President Obama is doing?” 9% didn’t know and 40% said yes. I swear we need a return to literacy tests for voter eligibility. Nothing complicated is needed, just a basic civics test with a few current events questions tossed in.
Then you see stuff like this and it makes you go.
WTF?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/01/president-obama-is-winning-on-a-foreign-policy-issue-for-a-change/
Clearly all the politicians are in clean up mode. Shit’s fucked up. I think Carter is getting a run for his position as worst president ever.
Trying to govern by sticking a wet finger in the air will result in exactly the kind of foreign policy we have now
Sadly the answer is not blowing in the wind my friends…
The answer is difficult, unpleasant, and unyielding. Our current crop of feel-good leadership has yet to prove its capable of rising to any occasion and producing an appropriate result. Troops on the ground to stomp ISIS into the desert sands will do nothing to resolve the regional long term stability. Our last crop of inept leadership created this mess, and the current crop has been unable to rise above the lack of planning from the previous to achieve any appreciable security or stabilization.
Piecemeal escalation isn’t a plan it’s a reaction. Leadership requires pre-emptive planning and execution of what is important to the long term goals of the nation, our leaders are more occupied with their political future than the future of the nation and that is true on both sides of the aisle. If the republicans have any sort of plan at all instead of whining about the current WH action they would be wise to step the fuck up and offer that action plan. The reality is they don’t have any more of an action plan than the WH, both sides are sitting around with the puds in hand doing the minimum.
We are long overdue for some leadership interested in doing far more than minimum required, and capable of executing more difficult planning and action to achieve more than the minimum.
I remain unimpressed all around to date and see nothing to change my views from either side.
The fact that we’re now putting D’s and R’s next to the names of polling firms is a pretty clear indicator that this country is fucked beyond repair.
For what it’s worth – Mr. Obama seems to believe that the people lead and the government follows, that taken together all of the people are smarter than their president. Thus, he listens to polls.
Government by crowdsourcing.
If I want to know if it is raining, I look out the window. I really don’t care what the crowd thinks. And, by the way, if the crowd said that it wasn’t raining (for whatever reason), that would not make them right. I still have my window and I would still wear my rain jacket.
Presidents are obliged to look out the window.
You know, real calamity is what will set this country right again, at least for a while. It may be a real, honest-to-goodness war; It may be wholesale economic collapse; It may be a series of terrorist attacks here, with many dead. I would very much like to think that most Americans would want to get this ship upright before any of that occurs, but it is not going to happen. The country failed in 2008 and repeated its mistake four years later. The Republicans are, as I say, mostly just wearing different-colored ties, so (with very limited exception) I don’t look to them for statesmen and decison makers. Yeah, you can call this naysaying and negative–but just don’t accuse me of wanting this. I don’t. I just see it coming.