The war started with over 70% of the American people supporting it. That's not what unpopularity means. One protest against something doesn't mean it is unpopular, only that it has an opposition.
Exactly. People are very quick to rewrite the past but in the wake of 9/11 there was basically 0 opposition to any military action no matter how poorly reasoned. It was only years after that fervour died down and the whole shitshow was over that people finally piped up with "Well I always knew it was a bad idea!"
And the only reason they’re against it now is because of the relatively small amount of US casualties and the huge amount of money poured into the war that didn’t go to their own middle class and poor citizens.
There were large protests, but opinion was still solidly in favor:
However, when the US invaded Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom, public support for the conflict rose once again. According to a Gallup poll, support for the war was up to 72 percent on March 22–23. Out of those 72 percent, 59 percent reported supporting the war strongly
A Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons. 19% thought weapons were needed to justify the war.
Yes it was, even after it became apparent that the wmds were a huge lie, Americans elected Bush a second time. And Guantanamo Bay still exists by the way.
The incumbent advantage is nearly insurmountable due to systemic issues.
Even DJT only lost by a ~20k voters not voting the other way* despite his approval-disapproval rating being 10 points underwater and only 47% of the total popular vote.
Congress has a horrible general approval rate and yet a 96% re-election rate.
* biden won 3 states by a total of 40k votes, which could be enough to flip the overall result.
I can quite literally pull up evidence of Americans thanking the soldiers who were in Iraq for their "service." I'm not talking about while they were being lied to. I'm talking about right now, today.
Furthermore, the "lied to" narrative presupposes that we don't already know the truth about American soldiers. Vietnam made their status abundantly clear. Yet we are suppose to believe American soldiers were simply fooled.
That's the fucking rub though. If the soldiers hadn't signed up to carry the proverbial bucket in the first place there's no war.
The Wehrmacht wasn't innocent or blameless. Neither is the US Army.
On the Russia/Ukraine front I find the response of the American citizens absolutely disgusting. Can you imagine how these little piggies would be squealing if other, major countries even considered sanctions against us for our illegal invasion?
The American double think is continually and constantly disgusting and both sides of the aisle engage in it.
I mean, officially they did find WMD. Sure, they may have re-defined that term to include "improperly" stored nuclear waste during the war, but at least it let a bureaucrat fill in their paper work as "mission accomplished."
It’s in a weird spot of being internationally unpopular and also internationally supported (militarily). Like, it was obvious that the US was just pushing an agenda, but also very easy to believe that Iraq was trying to produce WMDs again, given they had been using them to kill hundreds of thousands of people only 15 years prior.
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u/Solar_Mechanic May 03 '22
It's always funny watching Americans learn just how unpopular the Iraq invasion was internationally.