COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
Military Family Poll: War Not Worth It
Cincinnati Post
December 10, 2007
WASHINGTON
-- Families with ties to the military, long a reliable source of
support for wartime presidents, disapprove of President Bush and his
handling of the war in Iraq, with a majority concluding the invasion
was not worth it, a Los Angeles Times/ Bloomberg poll has found.
The views of the military community, which includes active-duty service
members, veterans and their family members, mirror those of the overall
adult population, a sign that the strong military endorsement that the
administration often pointed to has dwindled in the war's fifth year.
Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush's job
performance and the way he has run the war, rating him only slightly
better than the general population does.
And among those families with Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen who
have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 60 percent say that the war in Iraq
was not worth the cost, the same result as all adults surveyed.
"I don't see gains for the people of Iraq ... and, oh, my God, so many
wonderful young people, and these are the ones who felt they were
really doing something, that's why they signed up," said poll
respondent Sue Datta, 61, whose youngest son, an Army staff sergeant,
was seriously wounded in Iraq last year and is scheduled to redeploy in
2009. "I pray to God that they did not die in vain, but I don't think
our president is even sensitive at all to what it's like to have a
child serving over there."
Patience with the war, which has lasted longer than the U.S.
involvement in World War II, is wearing thin -- particularly among
families who have sent a service member to the conflict. One- quarter
say American troops should stay "as long as it takes to win." Nearly
seven in 10 favor a withdrawal within the coming year or "right away."
Military families are only slightly more patient: 35 percent are
willing to stay until victory; 58 percent want them home within a year
or sooner.
Here, too, the military families surveyed are in sync with the general
population, 64 percent of whom call for a withdrawal by the end of next
year.
"You generally expect to see support for the president as commander-in-
chief and for the war, but this is a different kind of war than those
we've fought in the past, particularly for families," said David Segal,
a military sociologist at the University of Maryland.
Today's all-volunteer force is older and more married than any before
it. Facing a shortage of troops, the Army increased the maximum
enlistment age from 35 to 42 and called up reservists, who tend to be
older and more settled than recruits out of high school. The result is
a fighting force that left thousands of spouses and children behind.
At the same time, deployments have grown longer and more frequent as
Soldiers rotate in and out of the war zone, sometimes three and four
times, with no end date in sight, a wearing existence that has
contributed to opposition to Bush and his war strategy.
"The man went into Iraq without justification, without a plan, he just
decided to go in there and win and he had no idea what was going to
happen," said poll respondent Mary Meneely, 58, of Arco, Minn. Her son,
an Air Force reservist, served one tour in Afghanistan. "There have
been terrible deaths on our side, and it's even worse for the Iraqi
population. It's another Vietnam."
The survey, conducted under the supervision of Los Angeles Times Poll
Director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 1,467 adults nationwide from Nov. 30
through Monday. It included 631 respondents from military families and
152 who have had someone in their family stationed in Iraq or
Afghanistan. The margin of error for the entire sample is plus or minus
3 percentage points; for military families it is 4 points and for
families with someone in the war zone it is 8 points.
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