Do Americans Know What Happened in Iraq?

by Michael O’Brien, Antiwar.com, September 06, 2010

A Fox News poll released last week indicates the majority of Americans feel the Iraq war was a success. It also suggests they want to get past it and focus on other things. This is good and bad. It is good that average Americans can put our invasion of Iraq in 2003 out of their minds. It is bad because it indicates they don’t know what happened, or don’t care.

According to the Fox News article, 900 people were surveyed by telephone and asked questions such as “Do you think the war was a success?” “Do you think the Iraqi people are better off now than before the war?” However, the survey didn’t ask some very important questions. For example, it didn’t ask the respondents questions such as “Have you ever been to Iraq?” “Have you ever read a book about the Iraq War?” “Do you know the number of Iraqis who died in the war?” These would be very interesting questions to ask along with the others. They would gauge the level of knowledge and awareness of the respondents to judge the veracity of the answers they gave. According to the Fox News article:

“Despite its contentious history, most American voters appear to have made a positive judgment about the country’s efforts in Iraq. Almost six in 10 (58 percent) voters think, overall, the United States ‘did the right thing’ by going to war, according to the latest Fox News poll.

“A little over one-third of voters (35 percent) take the opposite view – that the U.S. “did the wrong thing” by becoming involved militarily in Iraq. From a partisan perspective, there is still division – as 54 percent of Democrats think the U.S. did the wrong thing in Iraq, while only 14 percent of Republicans feel the same way. A slim majority of independents (52 percent) think the U.S. did the right thing in Iraq.”

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