LOS ANGELES, April 1 (UPI) -- This is another in a continuing series on public opinion about the war on Iraq.
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If the war were to bog down, would the American public grow dovish? At least as likely, judging from the Korean and Vietnam wars, is that large sections of the populace would grow more hawkish, demanding more troops and more ferocious rules of engagement.
The complex history of the Korean War, with its roller-coaster advances and retreats, is little remembered today, but had enormous political consequences, causing the United States to adopt a policy of permanent high defense spending, fueling the McCarthy "Red scare," and dooming President Harry S. Truman's chances for a third term.
The North Korean army swarmed south across the 38th Parallel in June 1950, driving the U.S.-led U.N. forces into a small corner of the peninsula. Gen. Douglas MacArthur brilliantly counterattacked, landing at Inchon behind enemy lines. He drove north, but in December 1950 Chinese Communist troops poured into the Korea peninsula, pushing the Americans back south and taking the South Korean capital of Seoul for the second time in the war.
Truman's approval rating dropped to only 25 percent, and did not much improve for the last two years of his term. Yet, according to political analyst Michael Barone's history "Our Country," "The widespread dissatisfaction with the Truman administration's policy had not produced significant support for American withdrawal."
Truman resolved to fight for a draw, hoping that negotiations would re-establish the 38th Parallel border between North Korea and South Korea. (That's how the war finally ended in 1953, after Dwight Eisenhower became president.) MacArthur called for victory, even at the risk of greatly expanding the war.
In March, the American alliance retook Seoul. The next month, Truman fired MacArthur. A Gallup Poll found Americans disapproved of Truman's action by 66 percent to 25 percent.
Feelings were extraordinarily intense at the time. One man who was a young artillery officer during the bloody retreat from Chosun Reservoir told me he would have volunteered to help MacArthur stage a military coup. "If General MacArthur had come to me and said -- 'I'm going to Washington to clear out that nest of vipers that is destroying the Constitution. Are you with me?' -- I wouldn't have thought twice."
MacArthur, however, did no such thing and merely hoped for the Republican nomination in 1952. His popularity eventually waned while the more prudent Eisenhower's support waxed. Truman, though, despite his vast popularity today, left office a deeply unloved man.
Another important historical precedent that has largely been forgotten is that much of the opposition to how the Vietnam War was fought came from hawks who despised the limits on American power that presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon imposed. (For example, the United States did not mine the main North Vietnamese port of Haiphong until the spring of 1972.)
Barone points out in his political history that LBJ's policy of limited war was never popular. Even in early April 1965, when Johnson was still riding high following his landslide victory over Barry Goldwater the previous November, only 14 percent endorsed LBJ's Vietnam policy. Gallup found that 29 percent favored more dovish alternatives, while 31 percent wanted more hawkish policies.
Barone went on, "Moreover, later analyses of public opinion showed that the second choice of those who favored one extreme could very easily be the other. ... They were less interested in endorsing methods than they were in obtaining results. Victory was an acceptable response, and so was withdrawal. What wasn't acceptable, it turned out, was the bloody stalemate produced by the Johnson decisions. ... "
On March 12, 1968, the little-known Eugene McCarthy, running as a dove, picked up 42 percent of the vote in the 1968 Democratic primary in New Hampshire, denying Johnson a majority. Nineteen days later, LBJ announced he wouldn't run for another term.
McCarthy's underdog performance is remembered as an endorsement of the peace movement. But the odd thing, according to Rice University historian Allen J. Matusow in "The Unraveling of America," was that "poll data showed that more McCarthy voters in New Hampshire were hawks than doves. McCarthy's remarkable showing, then, was not a victory for peace, merely proof that Lyndon Johnson ... was a mighty unpopular president indeed."
A few cynics have wondered how many of those who voted for Minnesota Sen. Gene McCarthy in that primary actually had gotten him confused with Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy, his ideological opposite. (Unfortunately, polling companies seldom ask questions that would expose what fraction of the populous is completely clueless about the basic facts of the issue at hand because that might diminish the high respect granted opinion polls, which is the product they sell.)
In one highly speculative scenario, if the public should ultimately decide the Bush administration cost America a decisive victory by over-optimism about the difficulty of the job that faced them in Iraq, the politician best situated to capitalize might not be a dove, but instead the naturally bellicose John McCain.
