Outside the Beltway:
Mirroring results that we’ve seen in the past, a majority of Americans remain opposed to military intervention in Syria’s civil war:
(Reuters) – Americans strongly oppose U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war and believe Washington should stay out of the conflict even if reports that Syria’s government used deadly chemicals to attack civilians are confirmed, a Reuters/Ipsos poll says.
About 60 percent of Americans surveyed said the United States should not intervene in Syria’s civil war, while just 9 percent thought President Barack Obama should act.
More Americans would back intervention if it is established that chemical weapons have been used, but even that support has dipped in recent days – just as Syria’s civil war has escalated and the images of hundreds of civilians allegedly killed by chemicals appeared on television screens and the Internet.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken August 19-23, found that 25 percent of Americans would support U.S. intervention if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces used chemicals to attack civilians, while 46 percent would oppose it. That represented a decline in backing for U.S. action since August 13, when Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls found that 30.2 percent of Americans supported intervention in Syria if chemicals had been used, while 41.6 percent did not.
Taken together, the polls suggest that so far, the growing crisis in Syria, and the emotionally wrenching pictures from an alleged chemical attack in a Damascus suburb this week, may actually be hardening many Americans’ resolve not to get involved in another conflict in the Middle East.
The results – and Reuters/Ipsos polling on the use-of-chemicals question since early June – suggest that if Obama decides to undertake military action against Assad’s regime, he will do so in the face of steady opposition from an American public wary after more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This isn’t an entirely a surprise since, as I noted, other polls in the past have shown public opposition to intervention in Syria, even when factors such as chemical weapons are taken into consideration.
After the infamous “they” scrubbed the MailOnline article that the ‘US backed a chemical weapons launch that they would then blame on Assad’, which included a copy of the email a supposedly Malaysian hacker snatched, why would ANYONE in their right mind approve such interventionism?
It can still be found in a post dd 28 January 2013 here. Unless “they” are out to scrub that guy’s post and any mention of it anywhere on the internet.
Personally, I don’t know how anyone can trust a darned thing BO plans. But idiocy when it comes to war knows no bounds.
By now, we should all know why this is happening in Syria – Qatar wants to run its natural gas line through that country:
And Qatar is backed by Saudi Arabia, the place where 15 of the 19 9/11 highjackers were from. The place that is funding islamist schools all over America. Though the US seems to have a really bad habit of backing the wrong people.
And I am happy to see you didn’t entitle this post ‘Majority still approves US insolationist policy toward Syria.’ Maybe you’re waking up to the difference?