POLITICS-U.S.: Hawks Flap Frantically as Polls Slip

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 2003 (IPS) - ”Now, you should know that I’m an ultra-conservative Baptist preacher,” Tom, a support technician at a major Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Dallas, Texas, told a reporter who was having problems with his email service this week.

”I do think Saddam Hussein is a very bad man and that he should go, but war should not be the way if the administration hasn’t proven its case. I mean, how come the public isn’t being shown the evidence?” Tom asked in the familiar clipped Texas drawl of President George W. Bush. ”What’s the world gonna think if we just invade? What’re the Muslims gonna think?”

Tom, the self-described ”ultra-conservative Baptist preacher” from Dallas, is a big reason why the fluttering of hawk wings could be heard all around Washington this week.

While the emphatic ”no” to the prospect for imminent invasion of Iraq issued by the leaders of France and Germany captured the headlines, the U.S. public’s scepticism about going to war is contributing to the anxiety attack that appears to have hit the administration.

Having finally succeeded in removing North Korea from the front pages, those promoting war in Iraq are finding that efforts on that front are not going their way, despite major efforts – threatening statements by Bush, major addresses by two other senior officials, the publication of a rare opinion piece by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the release of official documents highlighting alleged shortcomings in Iraq’s cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors – to rally the public behind war.

”It seems that the harder they try, the worse the polls get,” noted one Congressional staff member, whose boss is one of more than 100 members of the House of Representatives – including well over a dozen who voted for the resolution to authorise war against Iraq in October – to have signed a Congressional letter demanding that Bush should ”Let the (U.N.) Inspections Work”.

”The administration hasn’t effectively answered a fundamental question that keeps arising in even casual conversations,” wrote the Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib earlier this week in an echo of Tom’s question: ”Why exactly are we going to attack Iraq?”

Indeed, while the hawks tried to launch a new campaign to discredit the motives and means of recalcitrant U.S. allies abroad, the rug appeared to be swept out from under them as poll after poll showed declining support, not just for war in Iraq, but for virtually all of the administration’s key policies.

Just as top U.S. officials were huffing and puffing about Iraqi perfidy and the uselessness of inspections, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that seven in 10 members of the public favoured giving weapons inspectors months more to carry out their work, and for Washington to make public its own evidence if the inspectors cannot come up with any.

A Gallup poll released on the same day showed that Bush’s approval rating for his handling of foreign policy has fallen precipitously from 75 percent to just over 50 percent in the past three months.

On Thursday, a Journal/NBC News poll found that 63 percent of the public agreed that the United States should go to war only with the support of the U.N. Security Council – up from 55 percent just a month ago – while less than 29 percent endorsed unilateral military action, if necessary.

On Friday, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that 55 percent of the public believes that the administration is too quick to take military action without trying hard enough to reach diplomatic solutions.

Even more exasperating to hawks close to Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, the same percentage faulted the administration for reacting more to foreign events than guiding them, and said that the United States is less respected in the world today than it was two years ago when Bush took office.

”For an administration that has distinguished itself on its machismo, that’s gotta hurt,” said the Congressional aide.

All of the polls showed that Bush, whose personal standing, though still high by historical standards, has fallen to pre-Sep. 11, 2001 levels, also faces deep and growing public scepticism about his economic policies.

In an ominous echo of his father’s fate after the Gulf War, twice as many respondents said they were more concerned about the economy than about war in Iraq or the ”war on terrorism”, which they characterised as the greater danger of the two.

The new polls appeared to signal to at least one of the chief contenders for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, John Kerry, that the public will not support war without giving diplomacy more time. Kerry, who voted for the war resolution in October, felt sufficiently emboldened by the growing scepticism that he devoted much of a major foreign-policy address Thursday to denouncing what he called Bush’s ”rush to war”.

With so much evidence that the public wants more time for the inspectors and is hoping for support from the Security Council and U.S. allies, the administration’s increasing impatience may actually be counter-productive in that it confirms the majority’s belief that it is too quick on the military trigger.

Rumsfeld’s characterisation Thursday of Germany and France as the ”old Europe” was seen by some commentators here as particularly inept, both because few Americans tend to think of Italy and Poland – two countries touted by the hawks as staunch allies – as military heavyweights and because it makes British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s efforts to straddle the Atlantic divide much more difficult.

Blair is due here next weekend for a meeting that many analysts say will likely decide whether Bush will heed the allies’ and U.S. public’s call for patience.

(Rumsfeld’s popularity even among hawks on the right has also dropped since he told reporters earlier this month that he opposed the draft because draftees in Vietnam added ”no value, no advantage really, to the United States armed services”. He apologised this week.)

The hawks, clearly distressed by the tide of foreign and public opinion, are pressing for a decision and hope that Bush will make the case forcefully in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, perhaps by disclosing some of the evidence that Tom and the public are demanding.

‘No Turning Back Now’ was the title of ultra-hawk Charles Krauthammer’s Friday column in the Washington Post, devoted to the proposition that Bush has already committed himself and any retreat would mean a catastrophic loss of credibility.