GWOT, Opinion and The State of the (Blog) Union

There's been discussion of a sea-change among conservative bloggers since last November*, so I thought I'd post on it. I posited to Jib:

I think part of the problem is that there's little of immediate importance to get people writing, but more importantly most war supporters are disillusioned about a necessary war that is fairly sure to be dismantled once Bush is out of office, which is on the near horizon. It's a depressingly dangerous situation.

The tide seems to have turned against support for the war.

One of the latest Reuters polls claims that 60% of Americans are opposed to Bush's additional troop deployment. There are two main ways to take that - the simplistic, hoped-for way that the MSM would have you swallow, which is that 60% of people are against the war, or the more likely fact that when you mix a high percentage of people who believe the war needs a better committment strategically of the resources currently deployed before throwing more bodies at it with people who oppose the war (a significant number of whom are simply worn out by four years of daily bad news), you come up with a simple majority.

But don't believe me, consider other results of the poll: 63% support troop withdrawal by the end of next year, while support for a Congressional resolution decrying the troop increase drops to 45%.

CBS News updated its Bush/Iraq poll recently confirming public disapproval of Bush's handling of Iraq to 68% (with a 36% Repub/90% Dem split), which is being touted as anti-war evidence when it begs the question: do the nay-sayers want Dubya to be more or less aggressive?

The same poll also notes that among 2008 presidential picks, voters find the Iraq question an"important" issue, but not most important.

All this hearkens back to the June 8, 2005 poll in which the Washington Post noted that "more than half of the American public believes the fight there has not made the United States safer." You can count a lot of intelligent people in that mix who would acknowledge that it's an endeavor that will take time and patience, neither of which the media are interested in.

The WaPo and ABC News looked for ways to accentuate the negative years ago. Couple that with a change-over in Congress and a 08 campaign season that the MSM will align with Iraq opposition, and you paint too many conservatives into a corner.

We also have to take into consideration that many supporters are deployed, and don't show up in news reports, let alone opinion polls. Malkin has a nice post on this.

I also recommend taking a step inside Iraq with a blogger I helped send there: See Bill Ardolino's reporting here and his recap of a nighttime raid in Fallujah here. And in-country reports like this may have people thinking we're doing the job that needs to be done with the troop levels we have now.

Rave on.

*PS I meant to include the release of the Iraq Study Group's trumpeted recommendation of troop withdrawal in November as another cause for pause among bloggers. Apologies for merely footnoting it here.