"Americans Have Come Full Circle on Iraq" (CBS)

Six years after the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, American optimism about the situation in Iraq has returned to levels last seen in 2003, according to a new CBS News poll.

Still, most Americans continue to believe the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq in the first place. And Americans are now far more pessimistic about the situation in Afghanistan than they are the war in Iraq.

Sixty-four percent of Americans now say U.S. efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq are going at least somewhat well. That's the highest percentage since December 2003, shortly after the U.S. capture of Saddam Hussein.

Just one year ago, only 43 percent described things in Iraq as going well. In June 2007, the percentage who said as much was just 22 percent. Americans began feeling more positive about the situation in Iraq last fall...

Despite the increased optimism, more than half of those surveyed – 55 percent – maintain the U.S. should not have entered the country...

Asked what the U.S. should have done about Iraq, just 29 percent say the U.S. strategy of removing Saddam and rebuilding Iraq was the best plan. A nearly identical percentage – 28 percent – say the U.S. should have removed the Iraqi leader and then left; another 40 percent say the U.S. should not have gotten involved at all.

That the same article says that "55 percent maintain the US should not have entered the country," then two paragraphs later, that "40 percent say the US should not have gotten involved at all"-- which is it?-- is a reminder of how problematic public opinion polls are.  29% + 28% = 57% who think we were right to remove Saddam; do 17% also think that we could have removed Saddam without entering the country.

What's interesting, though, is how little credit Bush has gotten for what no one bothers to deny anymore was turning things around and winning the war.  I don't blame them though.  Too many pundits and politicians invested their whole reputational capital in failure in Iraq.  They have mouths to feed, whereas Bush is set for life.  Not giving Bush credit is a way of redistributing reputational capital from the guy who doesn't need it to those who desperately need what's left of their eroding stock.  Fair enough.

The pundits' punishment, and I think deep down they know it, is that instead of writing history's first draft, they are destined for history's dustbin.  No doubt there will be plenty of campus leftist professors who will write books, purchased only by students required to read them for classes taught by other campus leftist professors, who will treat the writings of pundits of the Bushitler school as evidence rather than neurosis.  But ordinary people won't buy them because they just won't make sense.  Even to understand them, you'll have to know the weird code-language of the liberal counter-narrative, according to which the idea that the Iraqis "welcomed us as liberators" is a neocon fantasy rather than, what irrefutable video evidence easily proves, a fact.  Or that Bush's proclaimed goal of making Iraq a democracy was either a cynical cover for imperialism ("blood for oil"), or else the impossible dream of a starry-eyed "ideologue," whereas it is now obvious that the war objective was quite practicable (that it was sincere should always have been obvious).  People might also be puzzled by suggestions that Iraq was a distraction from the war against al-Qaeda-- wasn't it in Iraq that we dealt the crucial blows to al-Qaeda?-- or by criticisms of Bush for trading the unwinnable quagmire in Afghanistan for the manifold strategic advantages of the Iraqi battlefield.

Oh yes, and remember those long-ago olden days when Bush was mocked from all sides by declaring "Mission Accomplished" after US troops had achieved the stunning feat of removing from power one of the world's most bloodthirsty dictators and fiercest enemies of the West in a mere three weeks?  I can't remember what the critics' logic was, but apparently 27% of Americans agree with Bush that it was at that point that we had accomplished the main mission.