Glenn Greenwald is Wrong About Iraq Public Opinion

Glenn Greenwald's mounted a hack and smear attack against David Kuhn and his piece today at the Politico, "Support for War Effort Highest Since 2006."

Here's Greenwald:

The Politico today published one of the most blatantly one-sided, journalistically flawed "news" articles on the Iraq War in quite some time and promoted it as its featured story, filled with dramatic proclamations certain to attract (by design) significant attention. The central theme is one which the political establishment is most desperate to believe -- that Americans are now supporting the Iraq War again and this will drastically re-shape the presidential race in favor of the pro-war McCain....

It repeats this pro-GOP assertion over and over. "The repercussions will be most acutely felt in the presidential contest." And: "Democrats' resolute support for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces may soon position them at odds with independent voters, in particular, a constituency they need to retake the White House." And: "The uptick in public support is a promising sign for Republican candidates who have been bludgeoned over the Bush administration's war policies. But no candidate stands to gain more than McCain."

You'll want to read the whole thing.

As I noted in my last post, I've been doing a lot of recent writing on public opinion trends, and the record shows that the Politico piece is not so outlandish as Greenwald alleges.

What's the beef here?

Greenwald essentially has a problem with the article's wording, where Kuhn suggests that "American public support for the military effort in Iraq has reached a high point unseen since the summer of 2006." That may be a poor choice of words (and the article's mistitled as well).

Why?

Kuhn's actually stressing a different issue, that a majority of Americans now believes that the U.S. will succeed in Iraq. The findings are from a late-February Pew survey, which I discussed in an earlier post.

So it's not so much that Americans "support" the war as it's that they see that we're making progress. When Kuhn's article is framed correctly as such, the analysis is uncontroversial. Kuhn notes, for example:

Democrats’ resolute support for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces may soon position them at odds with independent voters, in particular, a constituency they need to retake the White House.

Half of self-identified independents polled now believe the United States should “keep troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized,” according to polling data assembled by Pew at Politico’s request.

These claims are in line with other recent surveys (which show very little support for an immediate withdrawal), so in that sense the perception of progress in Iraq can indeed hold implications for this fall's election, which is a major argument in the piece.

Now, you can see more to Greenwald's outrage in his comments about Michael O'Hanlon:

The whole article cites only one on-the-record source: the media's favorite all-purpose war cheerleader Michael O'Hanlon, who warns -- yet again -- that the public will soon come to see McCain's pro-war views as the "correct narrative."

Liberal bloggers have sought to discredit O'Hanlon for alleged apostasies (he's with Brookings, which is supposedly a left-of-center think tank, and he's recently been trumpeting U.S. military success in Iraq with his periodic progress reports).

But, while Greenwald is certainly entitled to criticize the Kuhn article for lack of balance, he's not in the right to dismiss the data presented there.

Greenwald goes to a lot of trouble to cite polling statistics indicating that a majority of the public thinks the war was a mistake, or that the Pew survey's an "outlier" contradicted by more recent findings. For example, Greenwald notes that:

A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted after the Politico's poll found that Americans believe we are "not making significant progress" in Iraq, by a 51-43 margin.

All of this is true, but incomplete.

Polls certainly indicate that Americans think the war's a mistake (check Greenwald's link). That's understandable: Iraq's been expensive, in material and human terms, and it's been less than a year that we've been able to show substantial progress. Americans like results, and sentiment on Iraq has followed public opinion trends in earlier conflicts, such as Vietnam, whereby support for the war fell as the level of casualites increased.

But what Greenwald refuses to acknowledge is the dramatic improvement in public perceptions of the war, which is what Kuhn's really addressing.

If you look at Greenwald's own polling data, the number of respondents indicating that the U.S. "is not making significant progress toward restoring civil order in Iraq" has fallen 15 percent since December 2006, which was a month before the initiation of President Bush's new surge strategy.

Moreover, Greenwald makes it sound as if the public wants to head for the exits, for example, when he says:

Polls - all ignored by the Politico - have continuously shown that even when American perceive that the "surge" has decreased violence, they still are against the war as much as ever before and support withdrawal.

But again, that's not complete.

American's don't support withdrawal. Particularly, only 17 percent of those polled in a recent Gallup survey indicated they'd like to remove "all U.S. troops from Iraq as rapidly as possible, beginning now."

To put this differently, a large majority of Americans opposes an unconditional retreat from Iraq. This is significant, because both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been pandering to the hardline retreatists in the Democratic Party base, even though that's a fringe position.

Frankly, those who are calling for an immediate withdrawal - which apparently includes Greenwald himself - are the outliers.

Note more from Greenwald:

How could a war that is so deeply unpopular - and that remains so regardless of claims of "progress" - possibly benefit the candidate and party perceived as being responsible for that war?...

What is the point of writing a big feature article claiming that Americans are moving towards support for the Iraq War again and this is dramatically re-shaping the political landscape in McCain's favor while purposely ignoring the mountain of extremely recent empirical data completely negating that claim?

Actually the war's not as deeply unpopular as Greenwald indicates. In fact, while
Gallup recently showed a moderate majority saying the war was a mistake, the data found a huge partisan split on public perceptions:

Attitudes about the war are strongly related to one's political point of view, ranging from 91% opposition among liberal Democrats to 80% support among conservative Republicans. Thus, while the war will be a major issue during the fall presidential campaign, its impact is less clear, since war supporters (largely Republicans) will most likely support the GOP candidate and war opponents (largely Democrats) will probably back the Democrat.

Overall, the problem for Greenwald is he's unprincipled in his analysis.

True, the war's not wildly popular.

It's not true, however, that American perceptions have not improved. As security in Iraq has increased - and as casualites have declined - there's been dramatic improvement in the number of people indicating that the U.S. is making progress (Washington Post) and of those saying that the U.S. is now likely to prevail (Pew).

Thus, Kuhn's piece in the Politico is not so off target after all. Democrats indeed may be at odds with trends in public opinion. If Clinton and Obama continue to push for a strategic retreat - at precisely the same time that public opinion acknowledges dramatic successes - the political advantage will fall to GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain. The Dems will be vulnerable to merciless attacks as hopelessly out of touch with the facts on the ground and in public sentiment.

Finally, Greenwald jumped the gun in attacking Kuhn, falsely claiming that the author relied on no other data than the Pew survey. He's now posted a retraction, but further down Greenwall offers methodologically flawed conclusions surrounding the Democratic pickup of Dennis Hastert's congressional seat last week:

Less than a week ago, Democrat Bill Foster was elected to Congress in Denny Hastert's long-time, bright red district in Illinois. The centerpiece of his campaign was opposition to the Iraq war, and he defeated a pro-war candidate whose policies mirrored those of John McCain. Might that development have merited a mention by the Politico in this piece? Public opinion on the Iraq War is "re-shaping the political landscape" alright -- just in exactly the opposition direction as Kuhn claimed here.

Greenwald's essentially committed a variation of the "ecological fallacy" in statistical research, which is the error of making individual inferences derived from aggregate-level data.

Actually, in Greenwald's case, he's extrapolating from a single-seat special election to a national level problem, victory in the general election. While it's certainly the case that this year looks to be a Democratic year, it's incorrect to say that John McCain won't be competitive nationally on the basis of the election results in one congressional election.

In sum, Greenwald's wrong about Iraq and public opinion.

Public opinion indicates that the war remains unpopular. The data also support the notion that we're winning. These are facts that are hard for the nihilist leftists like Greenwald to recognize, much less accept.