Friday, August 04, 2006

U.S. Majority Backs Israel in Mideast War

The newest Los Angeles Times poll found a majority of Americans backing Israel in its weeks-long conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Here's an excerpt:

The poll found that nearly three in five respondents — 59% — backed Israel in the dispute that has now lasted more than three weeks, leaving hundreds dead and aligning much of the world in disagreement with the United States and Israel over whether to pursue an immediate cease-fire.
President Bush has resisted such an agreement until Hezbollah is disarmed and an international peacekeeping force can be assembled, a position that is generally in line with public sentiment in the United States, according to the survey. Of respondents, 13% backed an immediate cease-fire, while 45% said the United States should work toward both sides accepting an international peacekeeping force.

"I feel badly for Israel. They don't run around looking for trouble, but they are constantly being harassed and attacked by Hezbollah," said Rick Poleck, 54, of Huntingdon, Pa., a poll respondent."

Suppose this was Mexico and they were lobbing missiles into the United States. How long would we put up with that?" asked Poleck, a Republican who works as an engineer for a rural electric facility. "How do you defeat a terrorist enemy without [people] getting hurt?"

The poll found that 43% said Israel's bombing campaign was justified but not excessively harsh, while 16% described the response as justified but excessive. Fewer than one in three respondents — 28% — said the response to Hezbollah was unjustified.

Although the poll was not designed to track day-to-day changes in public opinion, the sample size each day was large enough to reflect shifting attitudes toward events in the region and the increasingly aggressive moves by the Bush administration to secure an agreement through the United Nations.

On the first day of polling, a plurality of respondents — 46% — said the United States should not get involved in the conflict. But that changed over the course of the violent weekend, with far more backing the idea of the United States working toward a peace deal.

"I know that there's really nothing you can do with Hezbollah, but if the United States doesn't do anything, the whole Middle East is going to blow up," said poll respondent Pauline Fantroy, 68, a retired nurse who lives in New York City.

"Something has to be done," said Fantroy, a Democrat. "I would get them all in a room and bat their heads against a wall like two little kids."
The survey also found the public relatively unconcerned about potiential threats to civil liberties, arising, for example, out of the government's international bank monitoring program or through the National Security Agency's tracking of phone calls and e-mails.

Additionally, the results found President Bush with a 40 percent approval rating, and 50 percent of those polled approved of Bush's leadership in the global war on terror (results that place Bush closer to historical averages for second-term presidents, casting doubts, at least for now, on the claim made by many that Bush will go down as the worst president in history) .

Be sure to read the entire article. The results from this poll are a bit more reassuring than those from last week's New York Times poll, which showed rising isolationist tendencies regarding America's role in world affairs.

3 comments:

a.k.a. Blandly Urbane said...

Good news, but boy they are probably unhappy with the wording of the poll. I'm sure they did not expect these results.

a.k.a. Blandly Urbane said...

Oh, I just posted part of your "torture" post, sometimes you just can't get around to things when you want.

Without Haloscan you are still good to go, but with it for example: when I posted/stole your post (I realize it's not stealing....), I/anyone else would then send a trackback to your post indicating that they used some of what you have written or just posted about it. This definately feels pretty good when someone thinks what you wrote was worth expanding on or at least advertising in a sense.

Rather than my comment saying I was going to post you, the trackback would show up in your comments section. It's basically a way to acknowledge your post/writing and you get credit for it in a sense and would know it was used.

The commenting portion I don't really look at when I go to Haloscan, since the comments show up at the posts, but you would manage them from Haloscan...word verification, bans etc.

It's pretty seamless and the basic service is free. Any time you quote a post of someones that has a trackback address, you would go to Halo; enter/copy/paste your post title, post permalink, small quote from your post and then the trackback. That blogger would then know you used it. They then would likely visit your site to see what this Burkean guy is all about. Also, anytime you trackback on someones post, people reading that post may then visit your post on the subject or whatever. It's interesting, the couple of times I have posted from Michelle Malkin's site, other bloggers that backtracked her invariably visit my post to see what I said. TRAFFIC!!!!!!!!!!

If you ever get into the "Truth laid bear ecosystem," (http://www.truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php) it would track those that trackback any of your posts and rank you.

It can certainly be lived without, but I started using it when I joined up with the Coalition Against Illegal Immigration, as trackbacks were part of it.

If nothing else, it's a sort of advertising of your site and getting you some recognition for your work. Your site is definately worth it.

Truth laid bear is kind of like Technorati, which I just clicked on from your site and see you have 77 posts (at least as far as Tech is aware of) and that this or that number of blogs link to you.

Technorati has been bothering me lately as it lists my posts only up to April or something. I don't know what the deal with it is, hopefully I'll find time to look into it some day.

Pop over to my site take a look at some of the logos like on your site; I'm an "Adorable Little Rodent" there (rankings are explained there). Anyway, the ranking is based upon who links/trackbacks me.

Wow, short story long....

Let me know if you have any other questions, I may have a clue. Then again, I may not.

Anyway, it's just another way of getting involved in the blogosphere

AmPowerBlog said...

Urbane One:

Thanks for the comprehensive info. I appreciate it. I don't have the time right now to switch over to Haloscan, but it sounds definitely worth a try. I'll let you know.

And thanks for regularly checking my blog.