Thread: Facts about Iraq

A Better Life
Poll: Most Iraqis Ambivalent About the War, But Not Its Results

Analysis
By Gary Langer


March 15— A year after the bombs began to fall, Iraqis express ambivalence about the U.S.-led invasion of their country, but not about its effect: Most say their lives are going well and have improved since before the war, and expectations for the future are very high.

Worries exist — locally about joblessness, nationally about security — boosting desires for a "single strong leader," at least in the short term. Yet the first media-sponsored national public opinion poll in Iraq also finds a strikingly optimistic people, expressing growing interest in politics, broad rejection of political violence, rising trust in the Iraqi police and army and preference for an inclusive and democratic government.
More Iraqis say the United States was right than say it was wrong to lead the invasion, but by just 48 percent to 39 percent, with 13 percent expressing no opinion — hardly the unreserved welcome some U.S. policymakers had anticipated.
As many Iraqis say the war "humiliated" Iraq as say it "liberated" the country; more oppose than support the presence of coalition forces there now (although most also say they should stay for the time being); and relatively few express confidence in those forces, in the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, or in the Iraqi Governing Council.
These results are from an ABCNEWS poll conducted among a random, representative sample of 2,737 Iraqis in face-to-face interviews across the country from Feb. 9-28. Part of ABC's weeklong series, Iraq: Where Things Stand, marking the first anniversary of the war, the poll was co-sponsored with ABC by the German broadcasting network ARD, the BBC and the NHK in Japan, with sampling and field work by Oxford Research International of Oxford, England.
The poll finds that 78 percent of Iraqis reject violence against coalition forces, although 17 percent — a sixth of the population — call such attacks "acceptable." One percent, for comparison, call it acceptable to attack members of the new Iraqi police. There are huge differences in these and many other questions between Arab Iraqis, who account for 79 percent of the population, and the Kurdish minority (17 percent). Forty percent of Arabs say it was right for the United States to invade; that soars to 87 percent of Kurds. Just one-third of Arabs say the war liberated rather than humiliated Iraq; it's 82 percent of Kurds. Thirty percent of Arabs support the presence of coalition forces, again compared with 82 percent of Kurds. Positive views of the invasion also are held disproportionately in the south of the country, as well as in the Kurdish north.

Read more: ABCNEWS.com : Poll: Iraqis Report Better Postwar Life

As I've said, it will be better in the end. But the end doesn't justify the means...