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Afghanistan and Iraq Wars Not Worth Fighting, say a Third of US Veterans
Poll results pose dilemma for Obama administration as it tries to bolster support for continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan
One in three US veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting, and a majority think that, after 10 years of combat, America should be focusing less on foreign affairs and more on domestic problems, according to an opinion poll.
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars have claimed the lives of around 6,200 US troops. (Photograph: Kevin Frayer/AP) The findings pose a dilemma for the Obama administration and Congress as they struggle to reduce the huge budget deficit and reconsider defence priorities while trying to bolster public support for the continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nearly 4,500 US troops have been killed in Iraq and some 1,700 in Afghanistan. Combined war costs since the September 11 terrorist attacks have exceeded $1 trillion.
The results of the survey, presented by the Washington-based Pew research centre on Wednesday, portray the war veterans as proud of their work, scarred by warfare and convinced that the American public has little understanding of the problems that wartime service has created for military members and their families.
They were more likely than other Americans to call themselves Republicans, and to disapprove of Barack Obama's performance as commander in chief. They also were more likely than previous generations of veterans to have no religious affiliation.
Pew, a nonpartisan organisation that studies attitudes and trends, called the study the first of its kind. The results were based on two surveys conducted between late July and mid-September. One polled 1,853 veterans, including 712 who had served in the military after 9/11 but were no longer on active duty. Of the 712, 336 had served in Iraq or Afghanistan. The other survey questioned 2,003 adults who had not served in the military.
Nearly half of post 9/11 veterans said deployments had strained their relationship with their spouses and a similar number reported problems with their children. However, some 60% said they and their families benefited financially from having served in a combat zone. Asked for a single word to describe their experiences, the veterans suggested: "rewarding", "nightmare", "eye opening" and "lousy".
There are about 98,000 US troops in Afghanistan, where the conflict began with a US-led invasion on 7 October 2001. Obama's 2008 presidential campaign centred on a pledge to withdraw from Iraq and strengthen the military campaign in Afghanistan. He is on track to have US troops out of Iraq by the end of this year, and in July he announced that he would pull 10,000 troops out of Afghanistan this year and 23,000 more by next September.
The Pew survey found that veterans were ambivalent about the net value of the wars, although they were generally positive about Afghanistan, which has been a more protracted but less deadly conflict for US forces.
One in three veterans said neither war was worth the sacrifice; a view shared by 45% of the public polled. Some 50% of veterans said the campaign in Afghanistan had been worthwhile; 41% of civilians agreed. Among veterans, 44% said the war in Iraq was necessary; 36% of civilians shared that view.
Of the former service members who were seriously wounded or knew someone who was killed or seriously wounded, 48% said the war in Iraq was worth fighting, compared with 36% of those with no personal exposure to casualties.
Exposure to casualties had an even larger impact on attitudes toward the war in Afghanistan. Some 55% of those exposed to casualties said the military campaign in Afghanistan had been worth the cost to the US, whereas 40% of those who were not exposed to casualties held that view.
Pew said its survey results found "isolationist inclinations" among the war veterans. About six in 10 said the US should pay less attention to problems overseas and instead concentrate on issues at home. In a survey it conducted earlier this year, a similar share of the public agreed.
The results also reflected what many view as a troublesome cultural gap between the military and the public. Although numerous polls have shown that Americans hold troops in high regard, the respondents in the Pew research admitted to a lack of understanding of what military life entails. Only 27% of adult civilians said the public understood the problems facing those in uniform, while the proportion of veterans who said so was even lower at 21%.
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Show All"However, some 60% said they and their families benefited financially from having served in a combat zone."
Death for Dollars
Upward mobility through destructive agility
You can make statistics say anything that you want. Phrasing the survey like this is deceptive. I absolutely am against the uncalled for invasion of the middle east countries by the U.S. however, according to this survey, 2/3 of the US soldiers have been brainwashed into thinking that it was the right thing to do. That is probably also reflective of the U.S. public after being bombarded with lies and propaganda aimed at subliminally hypnotizing them to the "righteousness" of the U.S. invasions
I don't know about anyone else, but I see a very distinct similarity between the way the 3rd reich influenced the German population into thinking that their policies were the right thing to do, and the way the 4th reich has influenced the U.S. population into thinking that we are doing the "right thing".
Twain's three kinds of lies.
Media is the new voice of god.
There is no doubt that the W administration acted in just the way that Hitler's reich cowed the rest of the world when it invaded Austria, the Sudatenland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. The W admin wrongfooted Sadam, told baldfaced lies to everyone, and cowed the Congress with jingoism into endorsing these debacles.
The face that the W admin presented to the world was "stop us if you can - we know you can't, so shut up." Just like Hitler, they wrangled the "consent" of all political entities (twisted the UN's procedural rules into institutional acquiesence,) maintaining the fiction of legality and right.
arl7101
I think what the author was pointing out was that it is more difficult to admit a war was not worth fighting if you know someone who died in it. Going that final step to admitting people have died, or received devasting injury, for no purpose is a choker for a lot of people, and a major tool that the oligarchs use to keep us fighting.
The veterans polled believed that "the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting". The poll seemed to center upon the fact "that the American public has little understanding of the problems that wartime service has created for military members and their families." As to be expected, this poll also inadvertently reveals that both the public and those in the military apparently do not give a damn that our brave troops have also unjustifiably slaughtered many innocent Afghan and Iraqi civilians. One has the feeling that if foreign soldiers were to occupy this country, there might be a little bit of concern about the number of American mothers and grandmothers and children who were killed by the enemies' bombs and bullets. But what should be a surprise to no one is that the welfare of people who have become the victims of the U.S. war machine raises little excitement in a country whose Pledge of Allegiance claims to be interested in liberty and justice for all.
"The results also reflected what many view as a troublesome cultural gap between the military and the public. Although numerous polls have shown that Americans hold troops in high regard, the respondents in the Pew research admitted to a lack of understanding of what military life entails. Only 27% of adult civilians said the public understood the problems facing those in uniform, while the proportion of veterans who said so was even lower at 21%."
Perhaps someone should inform the population of what the problems facing those in uniform are? The only other solution would be mandated service for all, like in Israel. Is that really something we wish to institute?
It's only a matter of time until Faux News and the Conservative News Network(CNN) after prompting from the White House, show a picture of some schmuck somewhere in the world, burning an American flag. And poof, millions of teabaggers and an assortment of other dumb asses will start pounding their chests and demanding that we bomb them back to the Stone Age! Never mind that these poor schmucks ARE living in the Stone Age to begin with! It's only a matter of time! Perhaps a national anger management program, or something!
I always have to laugh whenever I see flag-burning in the media, especially those in foreign lands. I'm sorry, but perhaps the spirit of George Carlin possesses me.
Sometimes I chuckle at the hurried artistry of an anonymous person who's quickly sketched or painted a flag on a piece of paper or bed sheet but more often than not I just laugh because there they are, in a foreign land and then like magic a credible official looking foreign flag of whatever nation they're protesting about suddenly appears and is instantly set upon the crowd who often have a handy little can of cigarette lighter fluid to douse the flag with......then WHOOMPF! up it goes with unexpected ferocity of flames, taking somebody's eyebrows with it and before the flames have barely got hold, the flag is snatched away (ouch my hands!), dashed to the ground and stomped upon, also ironically putting the flames out but the handy lighter fluid is out again and WHOOSH! up it goes again claiming another set of eyebrows.
Where do these flags magically come from in these supposedly spontaneous outpourings of ordinary peoples anger in the streets?
Well we all know the answers but it's still a ridiculous and funny sight to see eyebrows singed, fingers barbecued, and sometimes if you're lucky a fervent protesters clothing catches fire but they're usually edited out as they dance around bumping into surprised officials, soldiers and police overseeing things.
Of course in the good ol' USA there's probably a ready-made market of pre-doused flags in a handy carry-tube with free included lighter. All sizes, all nationalities, guaranteed to burn with a flame that's bright and can easily be seen on digital as well as old film cameras. Buy one, burn one free! - Manufactured by your trusted mom & pop American company. - Made in China.
The sausages are getting cold honey....throw another flag on the BBQ will you?
Tired of the fuss and muss of pre-doused flags? Hate that lighter-fluid smell? Try Magna-Flags - The self-igniting flags with the brightest burn imaginable BECAUSE THEY'RE MADE FROM MAGNESIUM THREAD!!!
Can't be extinguished, flare bright burn, no lighter fluid smell - The best flags for burning are MAGNA-FLAGS.
the rockets' red glare gave proof through the night that the flag was a flare.
Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet blaze
O'r the land of the fee
and the home of the crazed?
Old, are you saying that Americans don't all have flags of Iraq and Afghanistan handy in all of their homes? I thought this was standard fare. Haha
Why not ask professional baseball players if playing baseball was worth it. It would make as much sense as asking paid volunteer soldiers if fighting and dying was worth it. "NO, I lost my leg for no good reason, guess I shouldn't have signed up" Who the hell will admit he was lied to about the reasons for these phony wars. The military is brainwashed to accept that any combat initiated by a corrupt govt.is patriotic and in defense of freedom. Listen to college football QB Andrew Luck from Stanford, " The soldiers fighting for our freedom enable us to play college football".. SAY WHAT ? Iraqis and Afghanis are trying to end college football? For God's sake Andrew get a grip. Don't you know the Bushies were planning Iraq BEFORE 911.? Do you and fellow sheeple think the Iraqis implode the WTC bldgs.? C'mon son, what's under that helmet. Remember, Patriotism, the last refuge of scoundrels.
Do the veterans understand we/they have no dam business killing & dying
in Iraq and Afghanistan ?
beside both "wars" are illegal acts of criminal lies.
"Although numerous polls have shown that Americans hold troops in high regard"
this citizen "holds in high regard" those who promote diversity of life.
If you don't know something about a subject it's better not to say anything at all. Hyperbole is not helpful.
I remember being told time and time again that you can't support the troops if you don't support the war.
Where are all those chicken-hawks now?
"Pew said its survey results found 'isolationist inclinations' among the war veterans. About six in 10 said the US should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate instead on issues at home. In a survey it conducted earlier this year, a similar share of the public agreed."
Since when does minding your own business, and refraining from violent military action in foreign countries absent a declaration of war, equate with isolationism?
Pew Research and the Associated Press do a disservice in this mislabeled framing, given the historical context of genuine, pre-and-post Teddy Roosevelt isolationism in American political culture.
Most people and their governments can indeed walk and chew gum at the same time if they set their mind to it. One does not have to pay less attention to what is taking place overseas (good, bad, or indifferent) in order to focus attention on domestic issues. Having an inclination to butt out of other people's conflicts does not mean that conflict is being ignored, or that potential threats go unnoticed. This is a false dichotomy, much like the rhetoric of the war on terror/torture apologists , who characterized those opposed to their policies as naive fools who believed the oceans would somehow protect the nation from the evil doers lurking outside over there.
What these poll results really seem to say is that today, a decade after 9/11, both US military veterans and non-veteran American civilians - by about a 60/40 margin - would rather focus on butter rather than focusing on guns. If this poses a "dilemma" for the Obama administration in bolstering popular support for militarism abroad, it's those policies which are his problem.
Bill from Saginaw
I saw that term "isolationist tendencies" and thought that was an egregious misrepresentation of the sense of that idea, as well. Thanks for calling attention to it. It's utter nonsense to say that taking care of your own is "isolationist".
Bring em all home I say!
Sadly, the end result will cost us more as the number of freelance mercenaries and contractors is increased.
who gives a fuck what these killers think?
I think opinion polling of military veterans serves several potentially useful purposes.
First, if one out of three ex-soldiers who actually pulled tours in Iraq or Afghanistan (or Vietnam over 40 years ago for that matter) return stateside and bluntly term the military escapade underway to be stupid, immoral, or simply not worth the sacrifice, that's a pretty significant level of rejection. It is coming from people who were socialized and placed under intense peer pressure to believe the exact opposite. Antiwar views voiced by those with personal experience in warfare carries a lot of weight in the public policy debate. The image of those shaggy haired Vietnam vets tossing back their combat ribbons over the White House fence sent a powerful political message to the elites.
Second, opinion polling of veterans like this latest Pew study undermines the psy-ops narrative which depicts the troops all as heroes, returning from a grand and worthy crusade, who would be betrayed if America fails to stay the course. The post-World War I "lost generation" included an even larger percentage of returning veterans who believed waging that war was futile, the Phyrric victory certainly not "worth it." When the Great Depression hit and they ascended on Washington DC as bonus marchers, they became even more embittered. The value judgments those people drew, and the candid views many like General Smedley Butler openly expressed, does a lot to expose the flag waving lies upon which militarism feeds, from one generation to the next.
Third, having vets in the peace movement openly siding with antiwar civilians' views in opinion polling provides significant political cover for non-veterans. It is difficult for right wing blowhards to label such folks upatriotic wimps, or ill-informed dupes of left wing pacifism. Knowing how real veterans really think helps stave off the marginalization of peace advocacy in the mainstream media.
Finally, since some of these returning veterans are coming home with even more hardened right wing, racist, or violently Islamaphobic views than those they held before marching off to war, it would be only prudent to survey their opinions. I worry a great deal about how alumni of duty at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and other parts of the detention/torture gulag will reintegrate stateside into civilian law enforcement bureaucracies, or into partisan political activity.
Hold and hug your friends close, but also keep an eye out and try to keep some level of communication possible with those who consider you an enemy. You ignore such folks at your peril.
Bill from Saginaw
Very well said.
you are right of course, Bill.
my reaction was to these fools who actually volunteered.
any change of heart/mind is good and can and should spread.
most telling - and sad - in this report is the high level of support the injured vets still give the "mission".
vdb
Your comment reminds me of the line in the Rambo movie First Blood where Sylvester Stallone [another chickenhawk who managed to somehow avoid ending up in Vietnam] said that he was tired of being accused of being a baby killer. Rambo then went on to say that he lamented the fact that he was spat upon after he returned to the U.S. But as Jerry Lembcke points out in his book The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam there is simply no record of any Vietnam veteran having been spat upon after they had returned to this country or anyone credibly claiming that returning veterans were baby killers.
My take on this is a little different than that of Lembcke's. While there may not have been any news reports from the 1960s and early 1970s of veterans being spat upon there is little doubt that many of them had killed many innocent Vietnamese civilians. Likewise, it is also true that if many veterans today did not directly participate in killing civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, it cannot be denied that they belong to an organization that can be deemed guilty of doing just that.
It is as if a member of the KKK during the 1920s had said that he did not directly participate in the lynching of blacks in the United States. While that may be true it would also be accurate to note that he belonged to an organization that strung up African-Americans from the nearest tree.
"there is simply no record of any Vietnam veteran having been spat"
but they were all shat upon - by their good ol' Unca Sam.
Remember all the hype about how it costs a million dollars a year to keep a grunt on the ground in the ME? Those 98,000 troops represent 98 Billion dollars a year income to the MICC. Do you really think they are willing to give that up?
If a guy gets hit, they have to supply another million dollar warrior to replace him. A win-win situation for the MICC.
Somehow, We the People have to rescind the United Corporations of America Ltd's. ownership of this country and its politicians. As long as the United States is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Corporations of America, the wars, the deprivation and poverty of our own people will continue.
Maybe Occupy Wall Street has provided the seed and fertile ground for the revolution to grow and prosper in.
"Combined war costs since the September terrorists attacks have exceeded 1 Trillion $. "
Translation: Combined war profits have been in the Billions of $, since the false flag of 9/11!
It's obvious America is still a country irrationally besotted with it's military and all the mythology & fables. It's a militarised nation from long ago that has conditioned itself with all the aberrant mindset conditions that are so hungrily embraced and also so staunchly defended to the point of threats of violence or death whenever any sensible person disagrees with the cultivated majority.
The majority might bemoan about poor innocents being killed in foreign lands and they might make a tentative connection that perhaps, just perhaps there's a slight chance that maybe the good ol' USA military had a hand in doing it, but not little Johnny Gunbutt! - No, he's a good boy, he comes from good honest stock, a good American family, true patriotic values. No, it must be a very few and rare deranged persons who are giving the honest and freedom loving Americans a bad name.
The soldiers might come back and publicly state their opposition to whatever it is they were doing over there, and they all get mightily slapped on the back and told what a good boy they are! - We need do'ers like you! - You see we just lurve the military and somebody just like you Freddy Shortround who's actually been a real soldier...oooh, can I touch you! Yes, you who have been involved with it all and are now out of it can tell us mere mortals just where we're going wrong and how bad things are. Please, can we sit at your feet and just listen? - You see, we're utterly clueless. And there's people out there who need a good strong hand, a military strengthened hand, one that snaps too! and does a good patriotic salute and still will bravely defend his country to the death by killing others....yes we need you so much! - How about running for President! Yay! We could do with a staunchly patriotic man who's served in the military because....OMG!....we just lurve our military but it just need a' fixen' just a little bit.
Really.....
Why does anyone need to go off and do something which is plainly wrong and they know it is, then return and say they were sorry, then just because they apparently had experience at doing all the wrong stuff they're now held up to be shining beacons of not only virtuousness but also have attained grand cosmic wisdom of fairness, truth and compassion that mere mortals cannot attain unless blessed by ably partaking of the military in mind body and spirit?
Other people instead in the military take far bolder measures and stopped becoming involved, refusing to serve the military machine. That takes a huge amount of effort and real courage and they are often pilloried for it. But they're treated as traitors and not as special as somebody who apparently had the 'courage' to just go along with it all and 'just take orders' either pumping out bullets at people, dropping bombs on them, or simply assisting the grand macabre military mechanism of death and destruction by their very efforts.
By all means welcome into the fold people who have seen the true error of their ways but don't give them any credit for being so utterly shit-for-brains for taking part in it all in the first place.
Bravery isn't just 'earned' or 'won' by killing off others or making them suffer, nor is courage and a true human spirit gained or acquired as merit in doing so. That comes from far more down to earth roles across the world such as mothers and fathers giving their all to feed and house their families, the kindness and unselfish actions of strangers to others, helping those in need without question, sharing what you have with others, spending time with those who need it and helping to foster all these true human values with others. Making things better and living with a drive to do just that and make life for everyone much improved.
Sorry, I'm afraid poor ol' ex-serviceman Freddy Shortround stumbling around in his uniform and now decrying the military who he previously worked so very hard in sustaining, just doesn't compare at all in my book.
Couldn't have put it better.
What support? 80% of U.S. citizens want BOTH wars to end NOW. Obama, like Bush, doesn't really care about anything except the dollar value of actions, killing thousands in the process. The ozone act he stopped will kill some 12,000 people a year, 4 times what Bush killed on 9-11.
That's George Herbert Walker Bush.