Polls Build Public Support for War

by Joel Hanson, contributor

Christopher Hitchens wrote, in his book Letters to a Young Contrarian, that the underlying purpose of polls is to influence rather than reflect public opinion. The reason? Large corporations conduct polls as an effective--albeit expensive--form of market research, aimed at pushing their products instead of measuring opinions. As Hitchens explains, "the point is not to interpret the world but to change it. A tendency to favor one product over another is not something to be passively discovered and observed but to be nurtured, encouraged, and exploited."

I've thought of Hitchens' assertion frequently in the last few months, every time I've encountered a poll about the Bush administration's imminent war against Iraq. The polling questions, as most people who've read or participated in a poll know, are formulated to give the appearance of objective, scientific validity to what are actually slanted questions designed to elicit particular responses--in the present case, to serve the Bush administration's crude sales pitch pushing the "product" of war in Iraq over the "product" of peace. Bush, of course, has been assisted in his efforts by the Office of Global Communications, an organization utilizing $200 million of taxpayer money to mobilize American and international support for a war in Iraq. Opinion polls are one of their marketing strategies.

For example, a netscape.com poll asked its readers to complete this sentence on July 29:
President Bush would have Saddam Hussein assassinated because
1) it looks good politically (26 percent),
2) he'd finish the job his dad started (27 percent),
3) it's the right thing militarily (47 percent).

After cringing at the crudeness of the responses, notice that all three are justifications for military action, excluding a peaceful perspective and forcing those who disagree to ignore the poll or finish the sentence with a sarcastic response of their own, such as: "America has the world's most powerful army and therefore Bush believes he can use it to serve his own ends and violate international law whenever it suits him." But never mind the peaceful option here; even if you believe the Bush rhetoric that Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and is hell-bent on using them, do any of the above responses come close to reflecting your opinion?

Instead of a thoughtful response like, "Hussein poses an immediate threat to peace in the Middle East and therefore must be stopped by a UN-sponsored coalition force," the wording at the beginning of the sentence assumes that there is nothing pre-emptive or illegal about executing the leader of another country and, moreover, that Bush has the authority as president to do so. Neither presumption is, of course, true. But the rhetorical move has already been made, the military solution to the crisis in Iraq is assumed; the polling public is led to believe that the Bush staff is only quibbling about the best way to execute it.

A StarTribune poll, just after Bush's UN speech threatening American unilateral action to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, is a perfect example. Startribune.com asked this question on September 12:
If our allies and the UN don't back action in Iraq, the US should
1) act unilaterally on the assumption that the US can't afford to wait (42 percent),
2) wait. The US should never launch the first strike (9 percent),
3) heed the wisdom of our allies and try to build an airtight case against Iraq (49 percent).

Again, I thought of another unmentioned option: "The US should do nothing. According to international law, the US government has no legal right to determine the leadership of other nations, no legal right to attack another nation unless attacked first, and no legal right to determine which nations can or cannot possess weapons of mass destruction." In the absence of this fourth response, I choose the second response because it's the only one that hints at a peaceful solution, even if it implies that a military strike in Iraq will be necessary in the future. I was not surprised to learn that only nine percent of the people polled agreed with me.

I've talked to my friends and almost of all of them vehemently oppose the idea of an American military confrontation in Iraq, but I've not found one poll in which the pacifists were in the majority. Not one. My activist friends are, of course, undeterred by this polling nonsense, but these pro-war polls have a powerful affect on people who might be tentatively against military action in Iraq. Many believe they're outnumbered and eventually side with the imaginary "majority" in favor of war.

But the battle is not lost, even if most congressional representatives voted in early October to grant Bush unlimited means to remove Saddam Hussein from power. War can be stopped if we ignore the polls and continue our letter-writing, calls, street demonstrations, and pressure on congressional representatives.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio called a potential war in Iraq "unjustified, unwarranted and illegal," while Rep. Barbara Lee of California worked on another resolution calling for the American government to cooperate with UN inspectors. Washington State's Jim McDermott joined three other Democrats in Baghdad one week before the congressional vote and claimed that the Bush administration "is trying to mislead the American people." Only a sustained and coordinated effort on our part will inspire other representatives to join their ranks.