Latest CPA Iraq Poll

Great Debates
1

Here’s the link: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5217741/site/newsweek/

Some things immediately strike me about the piece as I read it:

Primarily, how little knowledge Iraqis have of what’s going on with their governement.

52% have heard or read nothing about the recent recommendations of the United Nations about the June 30 Interim Government
65% have heard or read nothing about the formation of an independent commission supervising the elections to be held in January 2005

The number of interviewees who didn’t become respondents was apparently noteworthy.
“Refusals were the highest seen to date, a trend noted by other pollsters.”

The dramatic drop in CPA’s confidence poll numbers- from 47% in November to 11% in May, (with a nadir of 9% last month).

The dramatic drop in the IGC’s cionfidence numbers- from 63% in November to 28% in May, (with a nadir of 23% in April).

That even though the subtitle of the document is “First Poll Following Abu Ghraib
Revelations” and even though the question was asked in April, respondents were not asked if the ‘unelected, interim government’ should 'Take responsibility for prisoners held by C[oalition] F[orces]

92% of respondents described Coalition forces as ‘occupiers.’

The dramatic increase in the percentage of respondents who asnwered that they’d feel more safe if Coalition Forces left immediately- 11% in November to 55% in Arpil and May.

This interesting note about when ‘Iraqis were asked if CFs should stay or go and why they held their opinion.’ 418 answered “CFs are occupiers and must leave immediately.”
“The 418 here are only slightly fewer than the 432 of all other stated reasons combined. This implies that status rather than behavior drives anti-Coalition sentiment.”

67% of responded that they ‘totally agree’ ‘violent attacks around the country have increased because people have lost faith in CF.’ Another 12% ‘somewhat agree.’
This is an example of how important ‘image’ and diplomacy are to this sort of a foreign policy, military venture.

Only 14% of those who ‘were surprised by the abuses at Abu Grhaib’ said that they were surprised because they ‘did not expect this from Americans.’

2

I agree.

3

I Love the pyramid graphs. It lends the data a real “professional” look. Seriously though, were the folks who put this report together tripping at the time?

What kind of idiot wrote this poll question?

(All Americans are like this 54%, Fewer than 100 38%).

4

Win or lose, when this thing is over and the history is written, the lesson for the Pentagon will be that in postmodern warfare (stealing the title of a book I’ve not read), whether or not you are winning is less important than whether or not you are percieved to be winning.

Perception creates reality; and the absolute ass-kicking the coalition has taken in the perception/propaganda front threatens to outweigh everything else. I think going in the feeling was that Iraqis would ignore what was on TV and instead look at the rebuilt school outside down the block. The opposite may in fact be the case.

Going forward, for the US military to maintain the ability to engage in any large-scale conflicts – even if utterly pure in intentions and perfectly executed – it will have to develop a propaganda machine as sophisticated and overwhelming as the armed forces. That’s where wars are fought now.

5

If you’re discussing ‘winning’ in a streamlined martial sense, I’d have to say that I disagree. It’s well known that the US military has the ready potential to militarily outmatch and overwhelm opposition forces in Iraq.
I think it speaks more to the criteria for ‘winning’ in this situation. The winning scenario in Iraq requires, (at least), Iraqi cooperative if not determined and/or enthusiastic participation. This necessitates that there be an enviroment that is conducive to such participation.
In part, ‘winning’ in this instance means maintaining a sufficient level of security in Iraq that the business of business and reconstruction can be carried on.
You’re right that the PR in Iraq is crucial to the US’s mission. In the past the State Dept carried out such operations as nation building. IIRC , the fellow who the Marshall Plan was named after was a Sec State. For some reason that escapes me at the moment, the Pentagon was put in charge of the reconstruction of Iraq. ( I wonder if Chalabi approved of the Pentagon being given the responsibility for administering Iraq reconstruction. ;))

IMHO, wiith the relative dearth of TVs, satellite connections, and consistently available electricity I’d be hesitant to attribute Iraqis’ perceptions about life in Iraq to “what was on TV” over what they experience in their own daily lives. YMMV.

I’m not sure if even more propaganda would be as helpful as adequate, realistic pre-war planning for the post-war period by experts who’re not ideologues.

6

The CPA commisioned the pollsters.
I thought that was an oddly phrased question. There were a few more that I thought sounded odd. I am curious about how things were phrased in the originals. Translations are queer things.

7

Which is the first part of my point exactly; nearly all likely future conflicts will also have these “victory conditions” and we’d better get used to them.

Not enough. My second point is that just as important is the perception of security. Think of the way a couple of shark attacks in Florida will keep people away from the beaches in Texas, or how a home invasion in New Jersey reported on CNN will lock windows in Wyoming. It does no good to tell people the statistics, to point cite the odds of a shark attack, to point out that there’s been no attacks since you installed the anti-shark machine … they’re humans and humans ain’t rational.

Mind you, I’m not saying we need *just * the perception … I’m saying we need both.

No, in the past it’s been a joint endeavor of military and civilian forces, as it is now. Paul Bremer is a civilian. George Marshall was Secretary of State … after being a five-star general. The State Department can write a check, but the military has the technicians, engineers, etc. to actually do the job.

Define dearth. I can’t find a cite for the numbers, but from what I read there are a couple dozen of TV stations, which suggests that watching TV isn’t something reserved for the elite. All of the stories below suggest or imply that the average person watches TV, though satellites are new.
Aljazeera says there are 200 newspapers, most of which are “sensationalistic.” I don’t think they’re starved for information.

How accuarte that information is, and how skilled they are in processing it may be another story.

http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20040123S0039

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1021762/posts

8

Not to downplay or underestimate the effect of what you’re describing, but how much of Iraqis’ security concerns are of this sort do you s’pose?
It seems that this same effect could be said to be at work to some degree for each of the choices respondents could have made. Still, relative to the other choices, each with their own potential for being misrepresented in respondents’ minds, security concerns won out.
It’s not unreasonable for an Iraqi to judge the recent levels of activities involving militias, bandits, bombs, tanks, gunships and such in Iraq as outside what they’d consider their normal tolerances for such activities.

Agreed. Propaganda can’t trump reality. No matter what you call it, a sow’s ear’s still a sow’s ear. The inverse is true of course- silk purses’re still silk purses even if you call them pustules instead.

The Pentagon’s writing the checks in Iraq. The recon contracts are DoD contracts.

The word ‘dearth’ and exact number of tvs in Iraq, (est 1.75 mil in 1997), aren’t really as important as the word ‘relative’ and the phrase ‘over what they experience in their own daily lives.’
For example, how many TVs per person, (electricity etc), would it take for there to be more Iraqis who chose security as the 'most urgent issue facing Iraq than there were Iraqis who chose any of other responses cobined, (59% security vs 41% all other issues)?
This number of TVs and amount of electricty per person etc that it would take for so many Iraqis to to think that security was the most urgent issue facing Iraq when in fact security was a tertiary issue, is the number that the ‘dearth’ is relative to.

Sometimes, reality has a hand in creating perceptions.

9

Obviously, but “normal tolerances” is exactly my point. A dozen shark attacks in one summer is percieved as a huge number, and will be reported as such and people will respond as such; but it’s still a negligible number in light of millions of people going to the beach and I’m still statistically more likely to be killed going to 7-11. But we’re frightened about one and not the other. Not because of a visible threat, but a percieved one: I was told that shark attacks are up and that scares me more than the far more probable car accident.

To cease with the analogies: A brief skimming of Iraq Body Count’s database (surely a source you’ll accept?) suggests that if we eliminate those attacking coalition troops and Iraqi police, the number of pure civilians being killed is about 100 a month in the last year … a bit more in the last couple of months, lower before that. If you do the math, it works out to 5 per 100,000 per year; about the same as the US murder rate.

There’s more to it than that, of course, and the numbers can be sliced any number of ways. Murders in America tend to be concentrated in bad urban areas … then again the same is true in Iraq; we hear about fighting in the same 3 or 4 cities, but looking at the list of Iraq’s largest cities, many of them have been quite peaceful. Unless you live in Fallujah or Najaf, you’re much more likely to be killed by a car accident than a car bomb.

A coalition general might well think that people whose local schools were rebuilt ought to be more impressed with that than by random which they have never personally seen. But in terms of winning hearts and minds, “ought” doesn’t matter.

The electrical power situation is a good example of the larger point I’m trying to make. I think it’s safe to say that electricicty would be at or above prewar levels if it weren’t for the constant sabotage against the power grid. Given that, the coalition might feel Iraqis ought not to blame them for the problems: they’re doing their best, but it’s virtually impossible to keep a grid up if saboteurs keep cutting the lines. And in some moral sense, maybe that’d be fair; but life isn’t fair, and people there (like everywhere) sometimes have unrealitic expectations, and sometimes you get blamed when you shouldn’t.

Obviously, the best scenario from the US’s POV would be to have the power levels up and have people give the US credit for it. But what I don’t think they adequately prepared for is the fact that even if the power levels were up, people still might not be happy. They think the mighty US should have it above prewar levels, or they say that the US should make electricity free or they forget that power was never 100% even before the war or whatever.

Fair or not, sensible or not, it won’t matter; until they are happy, it goes in the “loss” column. OTOH, even if the power levels weren’t up, if people felt the US was doing all it could and was blameless, it’d be a net win. Obviously, the latter isn’t what you aim for; but as in politics, having the facts on your side is cold consolation after you’ve come up 10 votes short.

Ibrahim is the problem. By all rights, in a what’s-in-it-for-me sense, he ought to be on America’s side; but he isn’t, and we need him to be.

Not that I have any idea how to make that happen.

Yes, I’m not denying that at all; I don’t see what difference it makes. My point was that the actual people on the ground will inevitably be mostly military, since they have the manpower.

10

Shark attacks are in a different category than military operations.
Your example about the shark attacks doesn’t require there to be an increase in the number of shark attacks outside of the ‘normal tolerances.’ It only requires that the reporting about these shark attacks exceed ‘normal tolerances.’

As far as the militias, bandits, bombs, tanks, gunships and such, there is an actual increase in the number of incidences, (as opposed to merely an increase in the reporting about them). Even without an increase in the coverage of these incidences, (or for that matter, without any coverage), these instances themselves constitute grounds for Iraqis to consider security ‘most urgent issue facing Iraq.’
While press coverage does have an impact, there are times when concerns are based in reality.
Iraqis’ security concerns are well founded. If the press quit covering these things, they’d still be a legitimate concern.

So, to Iraq’s normal murder rate, the US’s murder rate has been added. This justifies the Iraqis’ concerns over safety.
Television coverage is an insufficient explanation for the levels of Iraqis’ concerns about their safety.
It’s not trhe media’s fault.
It’s not the media’s fault that Iraqis don’t feel secure. It’s the result of Iraqis not being secure.

The chances of being involved in simple criminal violence have increased as well.

According to the Zogby poll of 2003 nearly a third of Iraqis said that one of their own family members, neighbors, or friends killed were killed in the initial invasion. This number couldn’t be reduced by also including the subsequent time period.
This means that instead of “random [violence] which they have never personally seen,” Iraqis are concerned about violence that has affected their own family members, neighbors, or friends.
The origin of Iraqis’ security concerns is not media coverage but reality. Not that media coverage doesn’t have an impact, but that it’s impact is not as great as the impact of reality.

Who is responsible for the security of these elements of the Iraqi power grid? Wouldn’t that be the Coalition?
Why is it wrong for Iraqis to to hold the Coalition responsible for what the Coalition is responsible for?

Iraq’s infrastructure was in shamble before the most recent invasion of Mesopotamia. Pre-war levels of most public services were pathetic. Reaching pre-war levels just means reaching pitiful levels.
Somehow, Iraqis got the impression that an US goal was trying to make things better than they were under Hussein.

Sure, sure.

The Pentagon has unprecedented control over this sort of project. The State Dept has a better record of reconsruction and winning hearts and minds than the Pentagon does. The Pentagon was put in charge for ideological reason it seems.

11

Oh yeah, link to the Zogby poll referenced:

http://www.taemag.com/docLib/20030909_iraqpollcrosstabs.pdf