Iraq and the Herd Mentality

This Gene Lyons column is a bit strident, but sometimes funny in a sad sort of way.
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The Politics of the Herd

Politicians aside, nobody flatters the great lowing herd of American voters more assiduously than the press. With headlines like “Bush Approval Rating in Free Fall” appearing for the first time since President Junior’s father lost his 1992 re-election bid, this would ordinarily be a good time to praise the wisdom of the American people.

Indeed, there are heartening signs that Junior’s hold on the crucial Moron-American vote is slipping. Once their attention has been fully engaged, voters most often do make intelligent decisions. The problem is that they’re so distracted and inattentive that they’re easily fooled. Consider the results of a Knight-Ridder poll recently reported in the Kansas City Star.

According to the survey, fully 83 percent of the public endorses attacking Iraq “if the United Nations backed the action and it was carried out by a multinational coalition.” Despite Junior’s allegedly charismatic leadership, however, support for war plummets to 32 percent in the absence of U.N. allies. Fully 63 percent of more than 1200 adults questioned would oppose the U.S. going to war alone against Saddam Hussein. More than two thirds, 68 percent, think that U.S. should continue to use diplomacy to disarm Iraq by peaceful means. Only 27 percent favor quick military action.

One could argue that the numbers illustrate the political trap President Junior has set for himself. Strong majorities favor taking action if and when U.N. inspectors find Saddam’s legendary nuclear or chemical arsenal. But they also want proof, and they don’t believe that Bush has provided any.

The most remarkable thing about the Knight-Ridder poll, however, was how little the public actually knew about Iraq despite months of White House drum-beating . “As far as you know,” pollsters asked “how many of the September 11th terrorist hijackers were Iraqi citizens, most of them, some of them, just one, or none?” Here’s what they said:

Most: 21%
Some: 23%
Just one: 6%
None: 17%
Don’t know: 33%

The correct answer, of course, is that there were no Iraqis involved in the 9/11 attacks—not one. Most were from our wonderful ally, Saudi Arabia. How any sentient American could fail to know that is a mystery. I’m confident more could identify Jennifer Anniston’s husband or the Oakland Raiders quarterback.

Another question: “Do you think Iraq and Al Queda—Osama bin Laden's organization—are allied and working together to plan new acts of terrorism, or not?”

This calls for an opinion, hence there’s no sure answer. It’s nevertheless striking that 65 percent believe that Saddam and Osama are, as the movie cowboys Junior impersonates would say, in cahoots. Despite the CIA ’s best efforts, however, there’s no evidence of an Arab popular front. To bin Laden, Saddam’s the worst kind of heretic. Odious as they are, the two represent totally different world views.

“Those polled who showed themselves to be most knowledgeable about the Iraq situation,” noted Knight-Ridder’s Martin Merzer “are significantly less likely to support military action, either to remove Hussein from power or to disarm Iraq.”

Here at Unsolicited Opinions, Inc. we were first struck by this phenomenon soon after President Junior delivered an October speech attacking Saddam. In what the Washington Post later called “a flight of fancy,” he claimed that Iraq had a fleet of pilot less airplanes capable of “missions targeting the United States.” In reality, Iran and Turkey were the limits of their range. Earlier, Bush had cited a 1998 report by the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency that supposedly declared Saddam to be six months away from building nuclear weapons. No such report existed.

A Gallup Poll soon appeared in which 79 percent said they believed Saddam had nukes. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman had previously observed about Junior’s absurd budget numbers, “Mr. Bush has made an important political discovery. Really big misstatements, it turns out, cannot be effectively challenged, because voters can’t believe that a man who seems so likable would do that sort of thing.”

A few days later an unrelated item noted that Americans had finished last among industrialized nations in geographical knowledge. Only 14 percent of students aged 15 to 24 could find Iraq on a world map. Think about it: four in five Americans felt threatened by a nation whose location was a complete mystery to most.

What this means politically is that far from nurturing dreams of empire like the perfervid ideologues around President Junior, Americans mostly just want to graze Wal-Mart in peace. It doesn’t appear to have registered that if the White House geniuses really thought Saddam capable of attacking with “weapons of mass destruction,” the well-publicized U.S. troop buildup in Kuwait offers the fattest target since Pearl Harbor.

Readily fooled by a politician as relentlessly disingenuous as Bush, the browsing herd of Moron-Americans won’t blame themselves should things go terribly wrong. They’ll simply stampede in the opposite direction.

 

If I were one of the poll respondents, my question would be "Where's Moron and why are we allowing immigration from there?"

You have to admit some of the polling answer are funny in a bewildering, frustrating, infuriating sort of way.