TIME: Almanac 1990s

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<text id=91TT0383> <title> Feb. 18, 1991: Can The Pro-War Consensus Survive? </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991 Feb. 18, 1991 The War Comes Home </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> THE GULF WAR, Page 32 PUBLIC OPINION Can the Pro-War Consensus Survive? </hdr><body> In Korea and Vietnam, backing for war dissolved as the death toll mounted, but that pattern might be broken by a decisive U.S. victory By Nancy Gibbs--Reported by Robert Ajemian/Boston, Dan Goodgame/Washington and Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta What would it take to shatter the consensus behind George Bush's policy in the gulf? A meat-grinder war of attrition, strewed with melting bodies in charred tanks? A female prisoner of war paraded on videotape? A bombed-out Statue of Liberty, sinking in tiny copper pieces to the bottom of New York harbor? Conventional wisdom holds that if a ground war begins and the body bags start piling up, backing for the war will dissolve. This is not just the expert condescension that assumes Americans will sustain a war only as long as it mimics a video game. The judgment is based on what happened in Korea and Vietnam and on the alchemy of public opinion. Before the bombing in the gulf began, a majority favored letting sanctions work; afterward, pollsters registered 80% approval for Bush's handling of the crisis. In light of America's Vietnam memories, the shimmying of the popular will raises tough questions about the true firmness of support. Those questions, in turn, make the job of the President and his generals immeasurably harder. While the generals direct the fighting, the President must direct the theater. Recently, Bush has missed no opportunity to cast the war in moral terms and has rarely been so eloquent as when expressing his conviction that this is a fight between good and evil. To focus on the heroism of allied forces and the villainy of Saddam Hussein lends the story line a moral clarity that Vietnam utterly lacked. "Our patriotic impulse is also a moral impulse," says Professor John Schutz, who teaches a history course at the University of Southern California called "Patriotism and the American Spirit." "I notice that George Bush spends a lot of time in church or on the air saying this is a just war. Vietnam wasn't defined that way. It wasn't justified in the public mind." But the justice of a war depends on its means and costs as well as its ends, and the Administration has struggled to manage these as well. For once, the peppy President is wary of cheerleading. He wants to send the message that the war is going well, but at the same time he fears the unreal expectations of a quick and bloodless victory that the footage of "smart" bombs can raise. For all the effort to manage the news--banning the shots of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base, spooning out upbeat statistics at briefings, keeping the press pool tightly leashed--the fact remains that this is a war of uncontrollable images. It unwinds at high velocity on live television, and the audience reacts just as quickly. "In earlier wars, even in Vietnam, it took months and years for public opinion to shift," says a senior White House official. "In this age of real-time journalism, our concern is that any major setback or anything that hurts the Administration's credibility could send public support sliding in a matter of weeks." The longer the war lasts, the more pressure the President will feel. Saddam may be an archetypal villain, but the more apparent that becomes, the easier it will be to conclude that his people have already suffered enough. Stories of Iraqi commanders shooting deserters on the spot make it hard to demonize the teenage conscripts on the Iraqi front lines. And if it is possible to pity the enemy soldiers who are being "softened up" by B-52 bombers, it is easy to ache for the civilians trapped inside a nation pounded by an aerial assault they could do nothing to prevent. While Americans wince at the sight of wounded children and grieving mothers, the phrase "collateral damage" is a Band-Aid on a gash in the public imagination. This helps explain the great care with which the war has been fought to date. Bush has won tremendous support for the measured, multinational approach he has taken since Aug. 2, collaborating with the U.N., the Congress and other Arab countries. The extraordinary efforts American pilots have made to avoid civilian targets have not been lost on the public. The irony is that the President's cautious strategy has not always meshed well with his rhetoric. While actually conducting a limited war, he has promised that American soldiers will not fight "with one hand tied behind their backs." The mismatch between Bush's words and deeds could lead to confusion in the public mind. "Americans have a very difficult time understanding and accepting limited war," says UCLA history professor Robert Dallek. While he and other historians note that support for the Korean and Vietnam wars fell as the casualties rose, they also observe that an all-out, no-holds-barred battle might have done less damage to public opinion. Even at the height of the 1968 Tet offensive, when public opinion sharply tipped against Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policy, the dissenters were evenly split between those who wanted out of the war and those who wanted it fought more aggressively. The debate over whether to let sanctions work or send in the bombers has now evolved into a debate over whether to let the bombers work or send in the tanks. To carry the public along, the Administration must take care that its decision to launch a ground offensive not be perceived as reckless, born of interservice rivalry or political pressure. No one knows better than those in the White House that a ground war would be ghastly. The most searing words of caution come from those who, like Bush, have seen war for themselves. "These kids just do not know what they are going to see when the shooting starts," says Herbert Dennard, a railroad inspector in Macon, Ga., who was a 19-year-old Marine in Vietnam in 1965. "And their parents will never know the horror of their deaths. They'll be heroes for being gung-ho." Some Administration officials fear that the popular mood might spin when the ground fighting begins. "So far, the U.S. casualties have been so low that people haven't really had to view this war in terms of the cost in lives," admits a White House official. Others note that patriotism is easy on the cheap--and that nothing would concentrate the public mind more quickly than reinstitution of the draft. "That would really put the fat in the fire," says Dallek. Such a move is unlikely, however, since Bush said at a press conference last week that he had "absolutely no intention of reinstating the draft." But though the prevailing opinion is that support will fall if casualties soar, the calculation may be more complicated. To begin with, the war in the gulf is not a unilateral guerrilla war to suppress a national liberation movement; it is a struggle to evict an invading army from a neighboring country it is occupying in defiance of the U.N. A TIME/CNN poll conducted last week by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman found that 79% expected U.S. casualties in a land war to be in the thousands or tens of thousands. Despite such catastrophic losses, 58% said they believe the war would be worth the toll in American lives. Though such opinions could rapidly shift in the face of an actual bloodletting, similar results in other surveys have delighted officials in the Administration, who believe the polls indicate there is overwhelming support for its actions. It is a measure of White House attention to public opinion that such polls are cited in detail not only by political advisers but also by war planners like National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. Even high casualties might not make much of a dent. "To win this war we've got to hit 'em on the ground," says Isaac Freeman, a delivery-truck driver in Washington. "To hit people will die." One lesson gleaned from Vietnam is that the nation will not accept a bloody stalemate. If young lives are to be lost, Americans want at least that they not be wasted. "We're in this thing now--we can't just walk away," says James McKeown, a commercial developer whose company headquarters in Woburn, Mass., is wrapped in a huge yellow bow three stories high and 22 ft. wide. The way the soldiers die could also have an impact. If thousands are slaughtered by poison gas, the rage for revenge could quickly drown the outcries for withdrawal. Finally, a victory may offset the cost in lives and treasure. "Any military adventure, however poorly conceived, however dubious the strategic objective, is absolutely validated by victory," says former Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, a history buff. "Once we commit to the use of force and it's decisive, then the cost is automatically worthwhile, without any exceptions in the course of American history." A more cynical prediction is that those deaths, like so many other violent and untimely ones, could eventually lose their impact on the American psyche. Tiananmen Square, Panama, Lithuania all captured the nation's attention and held it briefly before they smeared into background noise. Since the fighting began, many more people have died on America's highways or by gunfire in its cities than in the sands of the gulf--but at the moment, the soldiers' deaths matter more, since right now they loom larger than life. The perverse calculus of morbid fascination holds that once the soldiers have become statistics, public opinion will move on. For all the speculation about the nation's uncertainties, some predictions are widely shared. In interview after interview, people affirm that no matter how awful the war might become, support for the soldiers will hold firm. "This is a real legacy of Vietnam," says Boston business consultant Jack Caldwell. "People seem determined this time not to blame the troops, never to leave them unsupported." So far, nothing indicates that public support for the war is a whim. Having been chastised in the past for the restlessness and impatience with which their nation conducts its affairs, the majority of Americans seem to regard the battle as a duty that must be borne. There is little war fever that could turn into panic in the face of a temporary setback. If the public changes its mind, it would be only after the war bogged down in an inconclusive quagmire. Unshackled by the vagaries of public opinion, despots find it easier than do the leaders of democracies to march their countries into battle. But once they begin a war, Americans have an appetite for victory. If Saddam Hussein is betting that antiwar protests can grant him a triumph he cannot win on the battlefield, the odds are much against him. <table> Do you think the war against Iraq will be worth the toll it takes in American lives and other kinds of costs? Yes 58% No 31% How much longer do you think the war against Iraq will last? 4 weeks or less 6% 1 to 6 months 48% 6 months or more 38% If a ground war occurs, do you think it is likely that: American forces will suffer a high number of casualties 83% The allied ground forces will be able to end the war quickly 50% Iraq will use chemical or biological weapons against troops 75% [From a telephone poll of 1,000 American adults taken for TIME/CNN on Feb. 7 by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. Sampling error is plus or minus 3%. "Not sures" omitted.] </table> </body></article> </text>