Poll: Are 19% of Iraqis lunatics?
A January 2006 opinion survey, "What the Iraqi Public Wants" (PDFs here), produced a bizarre result: large numbers from all three major ethnic groups approved of attacks on the U.S.-led forces, but a substantial proportion of these patriots did not want the US-led forces actually to leave the country, or at any rate, not just yet. The overall result was that of the 47% of respondents who supported such attacks, 41% (that is, 19% of the total) did not favour a withdrawal of US-led forces within six months. The breakdown by ethnic group was given as follows (the first two columns seem the most important):
| Approve of attacks | withdraw forces within 6 mos. | withdraw gradually over 2 yrs. | reduce forces only as security improves | |
| Overall | 47% | 35% | 35% | 29% |
| Kurd | 16% | 13% | 28% | 57% |
| Shia | 41% | 22% | 49% | 29% |
| Sunni | 88% | 83% | 11% | 4% |
Thus, while the Kurds seem to be fairly consistently pro-US-led-forces and the Sunnis seem to be fairly consistently anti-US-led-forces (assuming that the "pro-attacks" and "withdraw within 6 months" groups in each case represent essentially the same set of respondents), there is a high proportion of Shia who favour killing members of the US-led forces and at the same time wish them to stay in the medium or long term. One can't tell how large this group is from the table. It must be at least 41%−22% = 19% of the Shia; but it is probably considerably more than that, because there should also be a substantial number of Shia who, not unreasonably, would like the US-led forces to leave quickly, but who are nevertheless not prepared to endorse killing them in the meantime. Judging by the overall figure quoted in the first paragraph, one might estimate the "bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you" group to be roughly 25% of the Shia.
The table also indicates that even among the supposedly wholeheartedly pro-American Kurds, there is a significant group (16%) which is against the US-led forces to the extent of being prepared to support military attacks on them. It is not clear whether this represents Kurdish minorities living in Arab areas, for example.
One wonders how the 19% of Iraqis reported to favour attacking US-led forces, but not an immediate withdrawal of those forces, would react if the Americans and British suddenly decided they'd had enough, and went home. Would they see this as a "betrayal" of their sweet selves? There may be rational reasons behind the apparent inconsistency of this group: the survey also reports that few Iraqis believe that the Americans will ever leave unless they are driven out, so attacking them may be viewed as a long-term pressure tactic. Nevertheless it would seem highly perverse to support killing people whom one recognizes to be (even inadvertently) doing one a service.
(Via commenters at Daimnation)
posted by Mr. Spog | 8:53 p.m.
3 Comments:
It seems perfectly consistent to me. If you want to attack someone, isn't it irrational also to want them not to be there to attack?
Yes, they want us to hang around so they can kill more of us.
We've done what we can do for the Iraqis. We should cut a deal with the Kurds for putting a military base or two in their area and leave the rest of the country to its own devices, with the warning that anything contrary to our interests will be met with force.
No more American lives should be wasted on the neocons' grand fantasy of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
Correction—instead of "the Kurds seem to be fairly consistently pro-US-led-forces," etc., I should have said something along the lines of "Kurds and Sunnis seem to be fairly consistent in their support for or opposition to the US-led forces." (Since there are substantial minorities within each group which "consistently" reject their majority's position.)
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