Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 8. januar 2014 / Time Line January 8, 2014
Version 3.57. Januar 2014, 9. Januar 2014
01/08/2014
When Will They Ever Learn?
The American People and Support for War
By Lawrence S.
Wittner
When it comes to war, the American public is
remarkably fickle.
The responses of Americans to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars provide
telling examples. In 2003, according to opinion polls, 72 percent
of Americans thought going to war in Iraq was the right decision.
By early 2013, support for that decision had declined to 41
percent. Similarly, in October 2001, when U.S. military action
began in Afghanistan, it was backed by 90 percent of the American
public. By December 2013, public approval of the Afghanistan war
had dropped to only 17 percent.
In fact, this collapse of public support for once-popular wars is a
long-term phenomenon. Although World War I preceded public opinion
polling, observers reported considerable enthusiasm for U.S. entry
into that conflict in April 1917. But, after the war, the
enthusiasm melted away. In 1937, when pollsters asked Americans
whether the United States should participate in another war like
the World War, 95 percent of the respondents said
“No.”
And so it went. When President Truman dispatched U.S. troops to
Korea in June 1950, 78 percent of Americans polled expressed their
approval. By February 1952, according to polls, 50 percent of
Americans believed that U.S. entry into the Korean War had been a
mistake. The same phenomenon occurred in connection with the
Vietnam War. In August 1965, when Americans were asked if the U.S.
government had made “a mistake in sending troops to fight in
Vietnam,” 61 percent of them said “No.” But by
August 1968, support for the war had fallen to 35 percent, and by
May 1971 it had dropped to 28 percent.
Of all America’s wars over the past century, only World War
II has retained mass public approval. And this was a very unusual
war – one involving a devastating military attack upon
American soil, fiendish foes determined to conquer and enslave the
world, and a clear-cut, total victory.
In almost all cases, though, Americans turned against wars they
once supported. How should one explain this pattern of
disillusionment?
The major reason appears to be the immense cost of war — in
lives and resources. During the Korean and Vietnam wars, as the
body bags and crippled veterans began coming back to the United
States in large numbers, public support for the wars dwindled
considerably. Although the Afghanistan and Iraq wars produced fewer
American casualties, the economic costs have been immense. Two
recent scholarly studies have estimated that these two wars will
ultimately cost American taxpayers from $4 trillion to $6 trillion.
As a result, most of the U.S. government’s spending no longer
goes for education, health care, parks, and infrastructure, but to
cover the costs of war. It is hardly surprising that many Americans
have turned sour on these conflicts.
But if the heavy burden of wars has disillusioned many Americans,
why are they so easily suckered into supporting new ones?
A key reason seems to be that that powerful, opinion-molding
institutions – the mass communications media, government,
political parties, and even education – are controlled, more
or less, by what President Eisenhower called “the
military-industrial complex.” And, at the outset of a
conflict, these institutions are usually capable of getting flags
waving, bands playing, and crowds cheering for war.
But it is also true that much of the American public is very
gullible and, at least initially, quite ready to rally ‘round
the flag. Certainly, many Americans are very nationalistic and
resonate to super-patriotic appeals. A mainstay of U.S. political
rhetoric is the sacrosanct claim that America is “the
greatest nation in the world” – a very useful motivator
of U.S. military action against other countries. And this heady
brew is topped off with considerable reverence for guns and U.S.
soldiers. (“Let’s hear the applause for Our
Heroes!”)
Of course, there is also an important American peace constituency,
which has formed long-term peace organizations, including Peace
Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, the Women’s International League for Peace
and Freedom, and other antiwar groups. This peace constituency,
often driven by moral and political ideals, provides the key force
behind the opposition to U.S. wars in their early stages. But it is
counterbalanced by staunch military enthusiasts, ready to applaud
wars to the last surviving American. The shifting force in U.S.
public opinion is the large number of people who rally ‘round
the flag at the beginning of a war and, then, gradually, become fed
up with the conflict.
And so a cyclical process ensues. Benjamin Franklin recognized it
as early as the eighteenth century, when he penned a short poem for
A Pocket Almanack For the Year 1744:
War begets Poverty,
Poverty Peace;
Peace makes Riches flow,
(Fate ne’er doth cease.)
Riches produce Pride,
Pride is War’s Ground;
War begets Poverty &c.
The World goes round.
There would certainly be less disillusionment, as well as a great
savings in lives and resources, if more Americans recognized the
terrible costs of war before they rushed to embrace it. But a
clearer understanding of war and its consequences will probably be
necessary to convince Americans to break out of the cycle in which
they seem trapped.
Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com), syndicated by
PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His
latest book is “What’s Going On at UAardvark?”
(Solidarity Press), a satirical novel about campus life.
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