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5 years in, opposition fractured on Iraq war

WILMINGTON, Del. — Five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Bree Tease is trying to balance the obligations she feels to Iraqis and to the children whose needs she sees every day in her fourth-grade class.

“Over here, there are so many ways we could use that money,” the 27-year-old teacher says. “But then I think about the poor families and children in Iraq, and they didn’t do anything wrong.” If U.S. troops withdraw, she fears Iraq will disintegrate into chaos. So should they stay? “You have to leave at some point,” she says, then shakes her head, uncertain over when.

Her frustration is repeated around the table when a dozen Delaware residents of various political bents gathered one evening last week to talk about the Iraq war. As the fifth anniversary of the invasion approaches next week, their conversation shows and a new USA Today/Gallup Poll finds attitudes toward the nation’s deadliest conflict since Vietnam threaded with crosscurrents — particularly among those who want to set a firm timetable to pull out U.S. troops.

The poll indicates that 40 percent of Americans want to stay the course in Iraq and are relatively united — confident that the invasion was justified and the consequences of withdrawing too soon would be disastrous.

The 60 percent who call the invasion a mistake and support setting a firm timetable to get out of Iraq are fractured into four distinct groups, including those who want U.S. troops out immediately and others who, like Tease, think America has an obligation to make Iraq better before leaving. In Congress, such divisions have complicated efforts to force a change in President Bush’s war policy.

The unsettled sentiment over the war is reflected in the conversation about Iraq in a conference room at the News Journal in Wilmington, Del. It begins when each participant is asked to write down a word or two that describes the situation in Iraq.

“People in need,” writes Lynn Tarney, 64, a retired camp director.

“Mistake,” writes Joseph Coccia, 27, a technical writer for a chemistry company.

“Unnecessary death and destruction,” writes Yahna Talley, 38, a program coordinator at a family resource center.

“Sand,” writes Bill Shields, 49, the vice president of a plastics manufacturing company.

Sand?

“It’s easy to step in it, but it’s hard to get out,” he explains.

Seven of the 12 people who are talking over sandwiches and soft drinks after work have seen the war touch their lives — much like the 55 percent in the USA Today poll who say a family member, friend or co-worker has served in Iraq.

Burkett, a former teacher, has bumped into former students who have been deployed there. A childhood pal of Coccia has completed one tour in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. Talley and Kassia Bradigan have close friends whose husbands are serving in Iraq. A former boyfriend of Tease was killed there a year ago.

The views they express also reflect many of the attitudes of the nationwide survey, taken Feb. 21-24. In it, four in 10 said last year’s increase in U.S. force levels had made the situation in Iraq better, a more positive reading than last fall. Twenty percent said it had made things worse; 38 percent said it hadn’t made much difference.

An analysis of the polling data and the conversation around the table in Wilmington reflect the complex and sometimes conflicting ways Americans view the war:

• The war’s defenders, the most affluent and conservative group, say the Iraqis will be better off in the long run as a result and warn that the consequences of pulling out now would be catastrophic. Nearly two-thirds say terrorist attacks on the U.S. are more likely if U.S. troops withdraw.

This group, four in 10 Americans, overwhelmingly support Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

“There have been some good consequences for them — school systems ... and police training,” Tarney says. The U.S.’s status as a world power carries obligations that “the American spirit” will meet, she says. “We always come up with solutions, and we always will” learn from past mistakes in Iraq.

• Those who want to get out now, whatever the consequences, include nearly one in five Americans. They see no obligation by the U.S. to establish security in Iraq before leaving. Indeed, the presence of U.S. troops is making things worse for both Iraqis and Americans, they say.

They say that the money being spent in Iraq ought to be devoted to problems closer to home, shaking their heads over estimates of the war’s cost. In a new book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says the total cost of the war will reach $3 trillion or more, a number the Pentagon calls inflated. Last fall, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and anti-terrorism expenditures overseas had cost $600 billion since 2001 and could cost a total of $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

“There’s going to be a civil war,” Shields says. “It’s either going to be now, if we get out now, or it’s going to be 15 years from now, if we pull out 15 years from now.”

• War opponents who want security established before withdrawing make up another one in five. This is the group that most strongly supports Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama over rival Hillary Rodham Clinton — no surprise since it is dominated by the younger voters who have streamed to his campaign.

“I do feel the soldiers need to be home,” says Tally, calling herself “torn” on the question of how quickly to pull out. “There’s a lot of destruction, a lot of death, and it needs to stop,” she says. “At the same time, I’m concerned about the people there, the families there. ... Those people are just going to be left vulnerable.”

• The most pessimistic, just over one in 10 Americans, say the conflict has been disastrous for both the U.S. and Iraq, and they see no end in sight. Most expect a significant number of U.S. troops to remain there for five years and more. Iraqis will be much worse off over the long run as a result of the invasion, most of those in this group say, predicting history will judge the war as a failure.

“At the time we invaded Afghanistan there was al-Qaida in Afghanistan,” Coccia says. “Now there’s al-Qaida in Iraq because of what we did there. What’s next? Pakistan? Saudi Arabia? It’s a mess over there, and we’re knee deep in it.”

• One anti-war group has largely tuned out. This cluster, including one in 10 Americans, calls the invasion a mistake and supports a timetable for withdrawal but has few views on the potential consequences of keeping troops in Iraq or bringing them home. Few rank the war as the top issue facing the nation.

“I think so, yes ... but I don’t really know much about what’s going on,” Bradigan, 38, says whether she thinks U.S. troops should pull out. She is an administrative assistant at a bank and the mother of three school-age children, including 9-year-old twin boys. “I don’t watch the news,” she says.

“I think you’ve got the right idea, just not paying attention any more,” Coccia says to her, noting that news about the war is often distressing.

Election ‘a referendum’ on war

The debate over Iraq is likely to be sharpened in this year’s presidential campaign in a way not seen since President Bush ordered the invasion launched in 2003. McCain has been the war’s most consistent defender on Capitol Hill. He’s likely to stand against either Obama, who has made his opposition to the war the foundation of his presidential bid, or Clinton, who says she regrets her vote to authorize the invasion and promises to start a pullout within 60 days of taking office.

“This election is going to be a referendum, to some extent, on the war,” says Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University who studies public opinion on Iraq.

In the poll, six in 10 Americans said the U.S. should set a timetable for withdrawal and stick to it no matter what. Just 35 percent said U.S. troops should remain until the situation in Iraq gets better, a number as low as it’s ever been.

That would seem to be a boon to Democrats, but it’s not that simple.

Among the groups of anti-war voters, McCain draws support from one-third of those who are the most pessimistic about the future of the Iraq conflict, a cluster that includes a mix of Republicans and Democrats. And in a head-to-head contest against Clinton, McCain also wins one-third of those who want to get out but feel obliged to achieve stability first. He has argued to them that, whatever differences they may have on the wisdom of the invasion, he is the candidate best able to achieve security in Iraq.

McCain’s appeal to some anti-war voters makes it conceivable he could put together a majority coalition — or at least neutralize the issue — despite the downturn in public opinion toward Iraq.

“You cannot go into a country and destroy everything and leave it in chaos without helping them rebuild some kind of infrastructure,” says Jennifer Curry, 59, one of the Delaware residents who joined the roundtable discussion.

She supports withdrawing U.S. troops but only when Iraq is reasonably stable. “I mean, there’s a limit,” she says, “but I think we owe it to them to give them a shot.”

“If we leave there now, what will happen?” counters Ron Burkett, 49, a real-estate agent and former Marine who argues in favor of getting out as quickly as possible. “If we wait a year and leave there, what will happen? The answer will still be the same whether we’re there six months or whether we wait 10 years and leave.”

Anthony Lewis, 59, an audio-visual specialist, wants policymakers to brainstorm for out-of-the-box solutions.

“We’ve tried the Army, the Navy, the Marines, and that hasn’t worked,” he says. “Somebody needs to say, ‘Switzerland knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody — let’s see if we can’t sit down and talk.’ What we’re doing is not working. We’ve spent millions of dollars at this. Somebody has to say, ‘Time out.’ ”

To stay or to go?

While most Americans support setting a timetable for withdrawal, they also think there will be damaging repercussions as a result.

Those surveyed said by wide margins that pulling out U.S. troops would make it more likely that a broader war in the Middle East erupts, more likely that Iraqis will die from violence and more likely that al-Qaida will use Iraq as a base for terror operations.

They were evenly split over whether staying or going makes it more likely that the U.S. would be attacked by terrorists.

“I think we keep forgetting that the war is going to come to us,” says Rafael Castro, 45, the facilities director at a Wilmington community center. “And I don’t think that America’s prepared for that — the terrorism, the way it’s growing.”

Castro and others worry, too, about the impact the war has had on the U.S. and its people, especially the troops who have served there. Talley thinks “all the time” about “just how they’re going to get on with their lives and rebuild their own lives at home with their families — all the time lost, all the deaths they’ve seen.”

The war has changed the nation in ways that may be hard to recognize, Lewis says. “Iraq, to me, is like a puddle,” he says. “We’ve thrown a rock into it and the effects have come out like ripples, and we really have to get a hold of that some way, shape or form.”

For one thing, cynicism toward the government has swelled. By 53 percent to 42 percent, the widest margin ever, those surveyed said the Bush administration deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the prime justification given for going to war.

“I’m so distrustful of our government in some ways,” Curry says. Jeffrey Loveland, 32, a business analyst, adds, “I still wonder what’s going on with Osama bin Laden.” Several people question why and how he’s eluded capture, more than six years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The conversation ends with the participants writing down a word or two that describes the impact on the U.S. of the Iraq war, five years after it began.

“Awareness,” writes Tarney, the retired camp director.

“Politically activating,” writes Shields, the businessman.

“Questioning government’s motives,” writes Tease, the teacher.

“Loss; grief; frustration,” writes Janice Chandler, 57, a retired operations analyst.

Lewis struggles aloud over finding precisely the word he wants.

“You’re for the war or you’re against the war,” the audio-visual specialist says, finally settling on “divisive” as his word. “It’s put us in two different camps.”

DISCUSS: Where do you stand?