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
International Atomic 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. and hundreds of thousands were
there.