Washington, DC — US President George W. Bush, in announcing Sunday’s missile and air strikes against Afghanistan, told US citizens, “we are supported by the collective will of the world.’’ International opinion polls conducted in the preceding three weeks cast doubt on this assertion.
Polling in the hours after Bush announced the strikes on television from the White House Sunday afternoon showed up to 90 percent of the US population in support of the military intervention. Peace rallies were held in about a dozen major US cities, including Chicago, Denver, New York, Portland, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington.
Surveys by Gallup International in the aftermath of last month’s terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon consistently have shown international sympathy for the United States.
To the critical question of how to respond, however, the majority of people interviewed in 32 of 35 countries polled said they rejected military action and favored a criminal justice response - namely, finding those responsible for the Sep. 11 attacks and bringing them to trial. Likewise, most respondents said they opposed any action that would result in civilian casualties.
The three countries where a majority of people interviewed favored military action were the United States, India, and Israel.
Asked to assume that military retaliation was the only option, majorities in 19 countries said their government should not join the United States in strikes against terrorist targets, compared to majorities in 14 countries who said ‘yes.'
Even in the United States and Britain, which took part in Sunday’s attacks on Kandahar, Jalalabad and Kabul, support appeared to be weak for the general counter-offensive against global terrorism, beginning in Afghanistan before expanding in scope, that Bush has repeatedly invoked.
“Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader,’’ the US leader reiterated Sunday. “Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers, themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril.’’
Some 62 percent of US respondents and 82 percent of British people interviewed in the week following the Sep. 11 attacks said, however, that “the United States and its allies should take military action only against the terrorist organizations responsible for the attacks on the United States, even if it takes months to clearly identify them.’’
According to Gallup, non-military options - primarily, criminal proceedings against terrorists suspected in the Sep. 11 attacks - garnered support from between 67 percent and 88 percent of respondents in NATO member states and Western Europe; 64-83 percent of Eastern Europeans interviewed; and 83-94 percent of Latin Americans polled.
Some 29 percent of respondents in France and 28 percent of those in the Netherlands backed military action, the highest levels of support among surveyed Western European countries. But the percentages favoring extradition and trial stood at 67 and 68 percent, respectively. Eighteen percent of Britons said they wanted military attacks, compared to 75 percent for criminal prosecution.
Gallup’s US unit said support in this country for military strikes has held steady at around 90 percent since Sep. 11. But the company’s London-based affiliate reported two weeks ago that US public support for this course of action stood at around 54 percent, with 30 percent of those interviewed saying they would rather see the perpetrators of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon brought to trial.
By contrast, support for military action was stronger in India and Israel, where, respectively, 72 and 77 percent of respondents backed it.
Supporters of military retaliation were most heavily outnumbered in Mexico (two percent), Greece (six percent), Croatia and Peru (eight percent each), and Pakistan (nine percent).
In no country surveyed did a majority of people who favored an armed response say the US government should target both military and civilian targets. The level of tolerance for civilian casualties was highest in Israel (36 percent), the Netherlands and Panama (29 percent), the United States (28 percent), and India (22 percent).
Bush, in his address to the nation, said Sunday’s “carefully targeted actions are designed to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime.’’
The launch of cruise missiles and warplanes against Taliban anti- aircraft positions, communications infrastructure, and alleged terrorist training camps appeared to have a dramatic effect on US public opinion.
According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Sunday night, 90 percent of US residents approved of the United States taking such military action, with 5 percent opposed and 5 percent unsure. In comparison, 79 percent approved of the decision on Jan. 16, 1991, to initiate air strikes against Iraq at the beginning of the Gulf War.
The poll also indicated that the proportion of US respondents who favored additional direct military intervention in Afghanistan -- even if US ground troops were used -- had shot up to 77 percent following Sunday’s strikes, an increase of 10 percentage points from a poll conducted two days before the attacks. Seventeen percent stood opposed.
If Afghan civilians were killed, according to the poll, US public support for military action would drop by 12 percentage points, to 65 percent.
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