Doug Lorimer
Six out of 10 US voters want Washington to withdraw some or all of its troops from Iraq, according to a Gallup opinion poll taken on June 6-8. Almost 28% want all US troops to be withdrawn immediately.
The US currently has about 140,000 troops in Iraq. In addition, there are 15,000 other foreign occupation troops — 8500 of them British — and at least 20,000 US-recruited foreign mercenaries, euphemistically called "private security contractors".
On May 20, General Michael Rochelle, chief of the US Army Recruiting Command, stated that 8000 US troops had died or been severely wounded as a result of the Iraq war.
According to the Gallup poll, 56% of US voters now say the US invasion of Iraq wasn't "worth it". The top reasons cited were the Bush administration's fraudulent claims about Iraq's (non-existent) arsenal of weapons of mass destruction; the number of people killed and wounded; and the belief that Iraq posed no threat to the US.
Commenting on the results of the Gallup poll, Ronald Spector, a military historian at George Washington University, told the June 13 USA Today: "We have reached a tipping point. Even some of those who thought it was a great idea to get rid of Saddam [Hussein] are saying, 'I want our troops home'."
Spector added that the pattern of public opinion on Iraq — strong support for the first two years that then erodes — is reminiscent of the Korean and Vietnam wars.
An ABC News-Washington Post poll taken on June 8-10 found that two-thirds of those surveyed said the US military was "bogged down" in Iraq, with 42% now likening the Iraq war to the failed US counterinsurgency war in Vietnam. That war officially lasted from December 1961 to January 1973 and cost the lives of up to 5 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, as well as 58,000 US troops.
As in Vietnam, the US occupation forces in Iraq are facing sustained resistance by at least 200,000 full- and part-time patriotic guerrilla fighters who enjoy widespread support within the Iraqi population.
The inability of the military to crush the Vietnamese resistance fighters — despite having poured half-a-million US troops into Vietnam by 1968 — fuelled mass antiwar protests in the US in 1970-71 and an antiwar revolt among troops that destroyed the US occupation army as an effective fighting force.
The Knight Ridder Newspapers news agency reported on June 10 that a "growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded there is no long-term military solution" to the Iraqi anti-occupation insurgency.
"Lt. Col. Frederick P. Wellman, who works with the task force overseeing the training of Iraqi security troops, said the insurgency doesn't seem to be running out of new recruits,", KRN reported. "We can't kill them all", Wellman said. "When I kill one I create three."
Growing public disaffection with the Iraq war and rising US troop casualties have led to declining recruitment rates for the US armed forces. On June 10, the Pentagon announced that the US Army had missed its recruiting goal for May by 1661 recruits, or 25%.
However, Agence France Presse reported on June 13 that many "experts said even that figure was misleading because the army has quietly lowered its May recruitment target from 8050 to 6700. That has prompted charges that the real shortfall was closer to 40%, which in turn has led to questions about the future viability of the army as a force, if it continues to be plagued by a lack of new recruits." It was the fourth month in a row that the US Army had fallen short of its recruitment target.
The Pentagon's announcement prompted leading US senators to call for a consideration of the restoration of military conscription. "We're going to have to face that question", Joseph Biden, the top Democrat of the US Senate foreign relations committee, told NBC TV's Meet the Press program on June 12, when asked if it was realistic to expect restoration of the draft.
"The truth of the matter is, it is going to become a subject if, in fact, there's a 40% shortfall in recruitment. It's just a reality", Biden said.
The US abandoned the military draft in 1973, following the mass anti-war protests during the Vietnam War, and switched to an "all-volunteer" military force.
From Green Left Weekly, June 22, 2005.
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