Speechless

Since the perspicacious and loquatious Melissa McEwan is uncharacteristically speechless, I'll provide some words of my own in reaction to this:

The Zogby International survey shows 52 percent of Americans would support a strike on Iran . . . .

Just 29 percent of Americans think the US should not attack Iran, with one in five people unsure about military action.

I would love to see the results of a survey asking these basic questions:

1. Please locate Iran on an unlabeled map of the world.

2.  Most Iranians are adherents of what sect of what religion?

3.  How many of the 9/11 terrorists were Iranian?

4.  What language is spoken in Iran?

5.  What is the capital of Iran?

I would bet that fewer than 15% of the American people could answer any of those questions correctly.  And that is why Bush & Co. have been able to bamboozle the people yet again.  Without even the most basic factual knowledge of Iran, "Iran" becomes whatever the President says it is.  This tactic got Bush elected twice; he was able to define Al Gore and John Kerry before those men were able to define themselves in the public consciousness.  In the Bush administration, pre-emptive definition has become an effective substitute for real debate and discussion. 

Comments

[Phillipe]

Those religious groups that bad mouth gays and our soldiers should just be ignored because if you hate something that badly you must hate yourself and thus be pittied. Let them be little bigots what comes around goes around.

[Phillipe]

Those religious groups that bad mouth gays and our soldiers should just be ignored because if you hate something that badly you must hate yourself and thus be pittied. Let them be little bigots what comes around goes around.

[Phillipe]

Those religious groups that bad mouth gays and our soldiers should just be ignored because if you hate something that badly you must hate yourself and thus be pittied. Let them be little bigots what comes around goes around.

[ted]

typical liberal...always smarter than the American public.

[Bruce Moomaw]

I'm extremely skeptical of Zogby -- who, to put it mildly, is not the most reliable pollster in the world. (You can usually predict who will win any race in an individual state by picking the guy that Zogby shows LOSING it.) Taking a look at other polls on the same subject in the compendium at "Polling Report.com" (the best Web compendium of polls in general that I know of):

CNN poll, Oct. 13: 68-29 opposition to the US "taking military action in Iran."

Fox News poll, Sept. 25: 54-29 that Bush should NOT "take military action against Iran before his term ends."

CBS/NY Times poll, Sept. 6: 83-9 against "taking military action now", in favor of trying diplomacy for the time being.

[y81]

I don't follow this comment. Is there any evidence that if you restricted the discussion to people who could answer these five questions, the poll results would be any different? It's fun to believe that the people who disagree with you are stupid, but it doesn't really conduce to democratic deliberation.

[Ulf Dahlen]

I agree that Bush is a very bad president, but what does that make the American people, since you re-elected him? I read many blogs and articles about the disaster that is the present administration, and I mostly agree, but isn't the underlying cause a population that is uneducated and stupid? Maybe I'm too cynical, but I think the first order of business for a new president should be to improve the educational standard in the USA. (I'm one of those left-wing, elitist Europeans.)

[Roger Rainey]

Why in blazes do those questions matter? Do you really think most people make their decisions based on what George Bush tells them? If so, you really need to try a little introspection. There is plenty of non-GWB-tainted information out there to base this decision on, and none of it is in response to those inane questions you've listed above.

[implicaverse]

1/3 of Americans don't know when 9-11 occured. They don't even know the month and date!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjtdxcNsRCM

[Jamesaust]

I favor a strike on Iran too "to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon." But seeing that military and proliferation experts have been exceedingly candid that NO such military strike would succeed in preventing such development, this polled question is irrelevant except to reveal how little effort has been made to educate Americans on the dilemma (Note to Dems: don't hold your breath for the W to do this for you!)

What is relevant is that too much criticism of such ideas center on the Bush Administration in general rather than on the merits (or demerits) of options regarding Iran. There is no solution that doesn't involve transnational diplomacy, direct and candid discussions with Iran, and pressure internally in Iran from the people including the 50% non-Iranians living there -- military action scuttles all of these.

[lewp]

C'mon Roger, are you kidding? If you can't answer the most basic question about Iran, what business do you have weighing in on whether bombing Iran is a reasonable course of action?

It's hard to read this and not recall Bush still not knowing the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni even after he had decided to invade Iraq. Perhaps the analogy is instructive.

In any case, I agree with Bruce's skepticism. Need to look deeper at the survey. It's hard to believe there's been that drastic a change in public opinion.

[John-Paul Pagano]

I don't think Bush bamboozled a majority of Americans into wanting to attack Iran; Ahmadinejad did that. And while I am one of Zogby's 29% of Americans who DOES NOT support ANY military action against Iran, I think this canard about the American Idiot being pied-piped into war by Bush and his media enablers is a false, liberal construct. The fact is that these "idiots" have a much better appreciation of Islamist totalitarianism than most liberals -- innately, to be sure, rather than intellectually, but an appreciation nonetheless, which among liberals is supplanted by triumphalist scoffing and a rationalist inability to acknowledge utopian ideology as a primary political driver. When the American "idiots" overreact, as these poll respondents do in this case, liberals comfort themselves with the Chomskyite notion that they wouldn't -- couldn't -- think this way if they simply hadn't been bamboozled by plotters hidden away in a dark boardroom. Bullshit. The fact is that liberals are much better equipped to handle the problem of third-world totalitarianism than the arrogant, corrupt and malicious naifs that pass for conservatives today; but, they refuse to formulate an approach for doing so, to the imperilment of us all.

[Neil]

This is very nice, but so what?

Imperial war is predicated on expansion and profit. What is the likelihood either will be achieved with war with Iran?

We have Russia saying they will not accept bombing. You have the potential for the entire Middle East to go up in flames from Saudi to Turkey to Pakistan, with Israel being drawn in to protect itself. You have oil prices doubling and a global recession invitable. Most important you have corporations everywhere losing money, because of economic decline and volitility.

Last time I checked "Dubya" and West Wing were owned subsidaries of the Corporatocracy and not the American public. Everyone can "wank" about what Johnny and Jane may think, whether they're idiots are not, and if they are fully cognizant of the intricacies of the origins of totalitarism (minus Arendt's commentary), but their opinion doesn't matter and never has.

[David]

Whatever bamboozling Bush did in 2000 to define Al Gore, we should keep in mind that Gore won the election. It wasn't close.

[Dennis Castle]

I can draw all the continents free hand and can compare and contrast all the worlds major religions, does that make me worthy of an opinion? According to this liberals, only if it concurs with their own ... otherwise you are an idiot.

How does this explanation for that poll stack up with the pathetic rationale offered here (... we are idiots being duped): Americans have been spoiling for a fight with those Iranian assholes since 1979 when weak-kneed Jimmy Carter made us all look like pussies. Time to settle up.

[adamgv]

I would genuinely like there to be two follow up questions that ask -

"Are you prepared to deal with the consequences of that attack on Iran?"

and

"What resources would you use to fund and maintain this offensive?"

I understand the idea behind the questions posed by Trumm - why ask people these questions when there's little way to gauge their knowledge of these issues. While we live in a representative democracy, I don't like the idea of 51% of the U.S. deciding whether or not we bomb a country they've heard about on the evening news.

Putin's being a real prick right now - and they already have nuclear weapons - let's take them out too while we're at it.

[James F. Trumm]

My own view is probably closest to Ulf's. A public that is not well-informed is a public that is easily led. However, I'd probably emphasize improving the news media more than improving the educational system.

I'm not claiming, Y81, that people are stupid, but they've been fed a steady diet of misinformation for so long that some of their innate skepticism and analytic abilities have atrophied.

Yes, Roger, better information is out there, but it's there only for people who actively seek it out. Casual viewers of TV news aren't going to get it.

The questions I wrote in and of themselves aren't really profound. They are markers, though, indicators of whether people have an understanding of even the most basic geopolitical facts that would enable them to make an informed decision on this issue. Isn't an informed decision something we want before going (again) to war?

[fcadmus]

y81 adds: "Is there any evidence that if you restricted the discussion to people who could answer these five questions, the poll results would be any different?"

No, it just proves that you don't justify and conduct foreign policy based on poll results because most Americans lack the requisite time and educational background to have sufficient understanding of the global ramifications. I'm not saying they are stupid...the polled may include medical researchers and electrical engineers, but they likely don't have the fullest knowledge of diplomatic, religious and economic ramifications.

y81 adds dismissively: "It's fun to believe that the people who disagree with you are stupid, but it doesn't really conduce to democratic deliberation."

Pre-emptive assaults on a foreign country is not for democratic deliberation. People voted for GW in 2000 because they liked his approach to tax cuts or promise to restore integrity to the White House...NOT because we knew it was a vote to invade and occupy Iraq in three years. And, when GW was re-elected, the vote wasn't based on who would bomb Iran beofre the next election. My child's preschool teacher, our house cleaner, my wife's hair stylist, my dental hygenist, the waiter, the mechanic, the drycleaner, the assistant high school football coach, etc., don't get to decide/vote whether or not our President pre-emptively bombs Iran. Their opinion is moot, as are yours and mine.

Poll numbers don't mean our troops are being pulled out of Iraq. Nor should they be used to justify the attack of yet another Islamic nation in the Middle East.

If you defend the poll on some high minded assertion they represent democracy, you need don't appreciate the notion of democracy our forefathers conceived and fought for. They didn't refer to poll numbers when drafting the Constitution.

[fcadmus]

If these threats to our national security are so grave, I don't understand why so many supporters of limited diplomacy and aggressive use of military force are opposed to a national draft for all able bodied men and women under the age of 35. Only with a draft would poll numbers have any significance.

[Trakker]

If Americans are really stupid enough to continuously be bamboozled by Bush and still come back for mere, then I hope they get what they want...but only after I have fled to New Zealand with my family!

Maybe turning the entire Middle East into a blood-bath, raising the price of gasoline in the U.S. to over $12 a gallon, reintituting the draft, crushing our economy and bringing on a devastating depression where thousands die of malnutrition and lack of health care, including kids of the former rich - maybe then Americans will learn that playing the swaggering bully has it's consequences - and just as important, God does not Bless America (or exist for that matter).

[Gabe Skee]

I totally agree with James on this one.

We may live in a "democracy" but our founding fathers never intended for the uneducated masses to have a say in how the country is run. They knew what kind of a mess we would wind up in if that happened, and now look what we've come to.

"In 1800, just three states (Kentucky, New Hampshire, and Vermont) had universal (white) manhood suffrage. The rest required land ownership for voting rights. Even by 1830, only ten states permitted white manhood suffrage without qualification."

-- A History of Voting Rights, Stephen Minz

We need to start a movement to return to the republic that our founding fathers envisioned. As Ulf stated above, "the underlying cause [of our problems is] a population that is uneducated and stupid"

Maybe the first criteria for voting should be a college degree. Or maybe we should raise the bar a little, and only Qualified Investors (1 million in assets or 250K per year income for the past 3 years) should be allowed to vote. I still like the original ideas of only land owners having the vote.

You make an excellent point, James, I just wish people would start listening to reason!

[James F. Trumm]

Thanks for the history lesson, Gabe; sorry, though--I won't take the bait. I know lots of people with college degrees who are deeply ignorant of the world around them. My point was that because our institutions have done such a poor job of explaining the history and geopolitics of our relations with Iran, people like George W. Bush are able to fill their heads with memes like "axis of evil" and "weapons of mass destruction." These memes don't produce informed opinion, but rather create a knee-jerk emotional response.

That does not mean that people should be disenfranchised. If you are suggesting that all opinions are equally informed, though, sorry again--they're not.

[Kat Hak Sung]

Typical government propaganda. A vivid sample how the intelligence manipulate public mind by media and poll. They gave you a number that most people support bombing Iran, then a war on Iran justified.

But the fact is that most people are against Iraq war. How people who hate Iraq war will prefer another war in Mid-east?

Those who refer this poll has a purpose. Even they put some question on it, they actually legalize the poll and thus, justify war on Iran.
If they said that poll is a result from Israel, it's believeable. But for US? Sorry, it doesn't make sense.

[moncler netherlands]

Don't know what is wrong what is rite but i know that every one has there own point of view and same goes to this one