Re: How many do support the war?

begin  Uwe Thiem's  quote:

| These are subjective impressions, of course. Not exactly
| statistically relevant. Still, makes me wonder: How many Americans
| really support the war?

you're right that any one person's survey of those around himself or 
herself won't produce anything very useful, for a couple of reasons 
-- the statistical insignificance you mention; also how 
representative the questioned sample is. for instance, here in 
connecticut, which has two democrat senators and a congresswoman and 
governor who would be defined as republicans only in connecticut, a 
state that went solidly for gore, support for the war and its 
objectives are profound and probably higher than 70 percent.

an even bigger issue is raised, though -- to what extent do floating 
polls tell us anything of much use? the polling has varied as much as 
20 percent based on nothing more than the day's news. it fell when 
the conventional broadcast opinion was that it was bogged down and 
the word "quagmire" was thrown around a lot. it rose when this 
appeared not to be the case.

this suggests among other things the wisdom of a representative rather 
than direct democracy -- a republic. running things on constant 
polling would result in a tremendous jumble of fits and starts, worse 
even than expecting much of use from the united nations. we cannot 
take a vote at the firehouse to see which fires the firemen feel like 
extinguishing.

(looking more broadly, the whole proceedings began three weeks ago 
today. hell, the falkland islands war took longer. yet there is talk 
that there must be something wrong because it is not over yet. i fear 
that our thirst for instant everything could lead us down a very 
dangerous path -- if disputes must, based on public opinion, be 
solved immediately, the likelihood of the use of things like atomic 
bombs is bound to rise.)

there are, too, the subtleties. the last day has been filled with 
stories of american tanks attacking reporters. which, with no more 
information than this, properly inspires outrage. but when you look 
at the al jazeera video of the seconds before the camera toppled 
over, you see at bottom center a stream of ejected, empty cartridges: 
the camera was located in or just above and behind a machine gun 
nest, which weapon was firing on the tank.

additionally, the u.s. is being scrutinized in ways and held to 
standards other than those applied to other countries. france has 
been shooting up the ivory coast for some months now, without benefit 
of u.n. resolution or focus on public opinion polls, for instance. 
bush is denounced in the harshest of terms, while the tyrant robert 
mugabe destroys zimbabwe with no thought toward public opinion.
-- 
dep

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