Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 3, 1991 TAG: 9104030147
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: MIKE FEINSILBER/ ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The flare-up over when the war should have been halted, this week's cry of betrayal from Iraq's retreating Kurds, the harsh treatment by Kuwaitis of their Palestinian laborers, democracy's dim prospects and Saddam Hussein's survival have all chipped away at the sharp edge of military victory.
But political scientist John E. Mueller of the University of Rochester, author of "War, Presidents and Public Opinion," said the war's "murky" denouement is typical. The public has come to expect the Mideast to be a quarrelsome place, he said.
And Everett Carll Ladd, president of the Roper Center for Public Opinion, said the public is equally as unlikely to be disillusioned by the failure of democracy to take root in the region.
"I think there was the sense that someone held power and was using it in a fashion inimical to our interests and it was a good idea to stop it, but not the expectation that democracy was going to flourish there," Ladd said.
They and other analysts of public opinion say the war has taken a fixed place in public opinion as a restorative event after defeat in the Vietnam War and humiliation in the Iranian hostage crisis.
That's the case, they say, despite factors corroding the victory:
The fog of postwar diplomacy.
Saddam remains in power and U.S. policy toward him amounts to little more than a continuing wish that he will be overthrown.
President Bush's decision against interfering in Iraq's internecine warfare has led to anguished cries from the retreating Kurds. One of their leaders, Massoud Barzani, said the allies have given Saddam a free hand to engage in the kind of genocide at home that they would not tolerate in Kuwait.
The reluctance of Kuwait's ruling emirs to share power with their subjects.
Americans aren't accustomed to fighting wars for the rights of royalty to rule. "It will be quite an irony," said political scientist Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, "if it ends up the people we fought for strongly resist any kind of democracy in Kuwait."
The heavy Iraqi loss of life.
By some authoritative military estimates, 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed.
Mueller said the public, recalling the "almost touchingly pathetic" pictures of Iraqi soldiers gratefully surrendering to American soldiers, may come to regret the price inflicted by American bombing.
The question of whether Bush stopped the fighting too early.
Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf hastily apologized after the Bush administration disputed his assertion that he wanted to keep the attack going when Bush ordered the fighting ended. What remains is the question of whether Iraqis might have been spared their bloody fratricide if the allies had sought a defeat rather than imposed a cease-fire.
Lingering questions about prewar diplomacy.
Even now that U.S. ambassador April Glaspie has testified about what she told Saddam, it is clear he was not warned that if he crossed the border he faced allied military retaliation.
These are fine-print details in comparison with the black type of the "Victory!" headlines.
Donald S. Kellermann, director of the Times Mirror Center for The People & The Press, said the public's impression of the war is fixed, no matter what shape peace takes.
"The public got what it wanted and it got what it was promised as the best outcome," he said.
But Page said that a year or two from now the war may have lost some of its luster.
"People might say it was a nice little victory but it was a Third World country with a population of only 17 million," he said.
"A year from now, if we still have very pressing needs at home that were neglected, it is possible that people will say, `Why were we devoting our attention, money and time to this?' "
by CNB