Shift in public opinion on Afghanistan raises questions

There are two news items from Just Foreign Policy on the Web, http://justforeignpolicy.org/node/572, that are worth a few comments.

The first item is that award-winning and widely admired journalist Seymour Hersh has taken a position on the US-led Afghanistan occupation and war that is at odds with the US administration, military, and congressional, positions. The headline from Just Foreign Policy reveals Hersh's view: "Only solution in Afghanistan is settlement with Taliban. And the only person to settle with is Mullah Omar." (See the longer statement and an accompanying video interview with Hersh at http://michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/seymour-hersh-obama-being-dominated-us-military.)

One implication for why the Obama administration refuses to negotiate with Taliban leader Mullah Omar is that US Afghanistan policy is being driven more by the interests of the US miitary and other powerful interests than by public opinion. The bloated US military needs to continuously find justification for the massive money US citizens are pouring into the Pentagon budget as a whole and to "wars" like those in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another implication is that given the domestic political strength of the Pentagon, Obama has chosen to heed their recommendations. If this is true, it is not a new story. C. Wright Mills wrote a book in the 1950s titled The Power Elite, in which Mills argued how the Pentagon was a major force in US foreign policy. This analysis was later expanded in the work of Seymour Melman in books like his Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War.

The second item from today's Just Foreign Policy on the Web, refers to a new opinion poll that indicates a negative turn among the US public on the Administration's Afghanistan military policy.

"Afghan president Hamid Karzai's visit to the White House this week arrives as the public's take on the war there has tilted back to negative, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

"A majority says the war in Afghanistan is not worth its costs, marking a return to negative territory after a brief uptick in public support in the wake of the announcement of the administration's new strategy for the conflict.

"Despite the shift in views on the war, President Obama's ratings for handling the conflict have remained positive since the unveiling of the new strategy - 56 percent approve, 36 percent disapprove.Views on the war's value have become more negative among both Democrats and independents. In the new poll, 56 percent of independents say it is not worth fighting, up from 47 percent in December. Among Democrats, 66 percent say it's not worth it, including half who feel that way strongly.

"Republicans are solidly behind the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, with 69 percent saying the war is worth its costs....

There are two things that stand out about the poll. One is that the trend among Independent and Democratic respondents is become increasingly opposed to the idea that the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting. This suggests that despite the paltry coverage of the Afghan war in the US commercial media, a high percentages of Americans are finally expressing opposition to the war and imply that US troops should be withdrawn according to some reasonable plan. The other point about this item is that Obama's handling of the war is still viewed by majorities as positive.

The two points appear contradictory. It's not clear why majorities of Independents and Democratics have come to view the Afghan war/occupation as not worth fighting any more, while a substantial majority overall think Obama is doing good enough. The answer may be that the polls are invalid, or that many Americans cannot connect the two, a war going badly and Obama's responsibility in that quagmire.

It also suggests that there is a rightward tilt in Obama's Afghanistan policy that reflects the influence of the military-industrial complex, other big corporate interests (e.g., bail out of Wall Street), the need to maintain the credibility of the US military forces, and a host of right wing psuedo-patriotic groups. Public opinion, with its ups and downs, doesn't rank very high in the Obama White House.

Behind it all, we must remind ourselves, there are larger geo-political interests in Central Asia and the Middle East that, in the final analysis, dictate Obama's policies and, in the end, make public opinion superfluous.