Speaking of self esteem retention, the Nitpicker catches prominent military fetishist Lawrence Kaplan cynically concocting troop opinions in order to safeguard his own hawkish outlook. In TNR's big Iraq issue, Kaplan writes:
For the sake of American soldiers...who speak with a sense of ownership about their war and see themselves as a progressive force on the Iraqi landscape--and who, according to surveys by the Military Times and the Pew Research Center, hold opinions on the war that run almost exactly counter to those registered at home--be grateful that the machinery of war overwhelms the din from Washington.
But the Military Times hasn't conducted a survey in over a year and, when they did, rather than troop opinions proving precise counterpoints to public polls, they tracked rather closely. At the time, 60% of the troops supported the war and 50% of the public. But even that overstates. From The Military Times' website:
should not be read as representative of the military as a whole; the survey's respondents are on average older, more experienced, more likely to be officers and more career-oriented than the military population. But the numbers are among the best measures of opinion in a difficult-to-survey population. The professional military seems to be lessening in its certainty about the wisdom of the Iraq intervention and the way it has been handled,” said Richard Kohn, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina who studies civil-military relations. “This seems to be more and more in keeping with changes in public views, and that's not surprising.”
As for Pew, well, the Nitpicker e-mailed them and they responded that they don't do surveys of soldiers. The closest them came was a survey of retired generals culled from Lexis-Nexis searches. Meanwhile, the most recent actual poll done of the soldiers found:
29% of the respondents, serving in various branches of the armed forces, said the U.S. should leave Iraq “immediately,” while another 22% said they should leave in the next six months. Another 21% said troops should be out between six and 12 months, while 23% said they should stay “as long as they are needed.”
So 76% of the troops want us out within a year. Funny how that wasn't mentioned in the article. Let's hope the din of Lawrence Kaplan doesn't overwhelm the voices of those he claims to honor.
