Poll: Is U.S. doing enough to quell Iraqi fighting?
Washington (CNN) - Half the public says the U.S. doesn't have a responsibility to do something about escalating bloodshed in Iraq, according to a new national poll.
The CBS News/New York Times survey released Monday also indicates a plurality of Americans say President Barack Obama has had the appropriate response so far to the aggressive drive by radical Sunni militants in capturing city after city in northern and central Iraq as they march towards Baghdad.
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According to the poll, which was conducted over the weekend, 50% of those questioned say the U.S doesn't have a responsibility to do anything about the fighting, with 42% saying Washington does have a responsibility to get involved.
There's a partisan divide, with a majority of independents and Democrats saying the U.S. doesn't have a responsibility and a majority of Republicans disagreeing.
Latest CNN reporting on bloodshed in Iraq
The survey's release came as Secretary of State John Kerry, in Baghdad Monday, said that U.S. support for Iraq will be "intense" and "sustained," and will be effective if Iraqi leaders unite to face the militant threat.
President Obama's actions
Forty-one percent of those questioned say the President's response to the crisis has been appropriate, with nearly three in 10 saying Obama should do more and 22% saying he should do less. As expected, there's a wide partisan divide on that question, with a majority of Republicans saying the President should do more, and more than six in 10 Democrats saying Obama's had the right response.
The poll also indicates that 44% of Americans say the violence in Iraq will cause the threat of terrorism in the U.S. to rise, with half of those questioned saying it will stay the same.
The CBS News/New York Times poll was conducted June 20-22, with 1,009 adults nationwide questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.
CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report
Those people have been fighting for the past five thousand years. Who, in their right mind would think it could stop now. War is the main portion of there lives and will continue until they wipe themselves out. Go home. Stay home.
No more Iraq.
Let's invest the money that 'would' go to Iraq in developing renewable energies, like Algae oil ( it's much cheaper than war ) ...
Then we won't have to go to war, and we won't have to dismantle our economy that's structured on fossil fuels.
Simple. Problem solved.
They Hate us for our Freedom.
One little thing that might help the US in the middle east. Dump Israel. Let them reap what they have sown. Look it up, USS Liberty, read what those who were there have to say. Palestinians? Again, look it up. Among other sites, the UN has an excellent chronological history of exactly what happened there. Forget CNN, etc... Iran? Look it up, we earned their hatred. Don't want this to happen again? Don't save Christians bent on conversion and keep our noses out of the business of everyone else except our own.
US doing enough? Probably not with a dem president whose responsible for the mess for cutting and running.
"Poll: Is U.S. doing enough to quell Iraqi fighting?" Who ever constructed this question for the Poll supports more US involvement in the quagmire called Iraq. There is no way to answer the question of the poll to express how you really feel about us getting back into that hell and risk the lives of young men and women of America.Answer to the poll should be "have'nt we done enough?". We, the US , need to stay out of that mess. I now am sure I will vote for Rand Paul in the next Presidential elections. He will keep us out of unnecessary foreign wars.
@Sniffit-Tell it to H. Clinton, who stated it was Bush who was responsible for the withdraw and ending the war.
smith
Stop giving aid to anti-Assad forces this was a very stupid move from the start. Assad would have crushed the ISIS and we wouldn`t have this issue.Remember Afghanistan in the 80`s? Don`t fund Sunni radicals, these are the idiots wanting to wage jihad against the US. smh.
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Give it up, smith. You've
The United States *is not* providing military aid to any of the groups fighting against the Assad government. One, it's difficult to tell the "good guys" from the "bad guys." Two, a vote was put before the Congress, because the Republicans insisted that the POTUS had no authority to act on his own. The Congress failed to pass a measure authorizing military action, and it failed to authorize funding for military aid in Syria.
This is a thousand year old war that pits Persians against Arabs. It's mostly none of our business. Unfortunately, the conflict jeopardizes our economic security because of the oil in the region. There is no good solution here.
So according to the article a majority of Republicans want to do more in Iraq. Isn't that the same party who wants a smaller government along with less money spent and lower deficits? I'm confused
USA should stop spending taxpayers' money training and giving weapons to fighters trying to overthrow democratically elected leaders. Also stop dropping uranium shell bomb and stop using white phosphorus. These materials and activities undermine the "freedom and democracy" American brand. Let's spend our tax money on USA infrastructure and renewable energy in the USA instead. These are better investments.
Let's stop training and arming fighters who seek to overthrow democratically elected leaders. Let's stop dropping uranium shell bombs and stop using white phosphorus. These actions and materials undermine the the USA "freedom & democracy" brand, and make people hate us. Instead, let's spend our tax money on USA infrastructure, education, and on renewable energy that does not pollute water and air and is not radioactive.
honestuck says:
June 23, 2014 02:41 pm at 2:41 pm
“Poll: Is U.S. doing enough to quell Iraqi fighting?” Who ever constructed this question for the Poll supports more US involvement in the quagmire called Iraq. There is no way to answer the question of the poll to express how you really feel about us getting back into that hell and risk the lives of young men and women of America.Answer to the poll should be “have’nt we done enough?”. We, the US , need to stay out of that mess. I now am sure I will vote for Rand Paul in the next Presidential elections. He will keep us out of unnecessary foreign wars.
You'll be writing him in, he'll never get the nomination. The GOP stands for war, war and more war. They'll never put a guy up that doesn't want war.
It was the stupidity of Cheney and the entire "W" Admin. They thought killing 3 people (Saddam and his 2 sons) that would had ended everything! How silly and not having a capacity of thinking right, these people were? Throw them into jail. They deserve it.
@ swagmaster
"The imbeciles calling to let the Iraqi's and ISIS fight it out are blind to the bigger picture. The last thing we want is an organized, genocidal terrorist army conquering the Middle East."
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Our youngest son spent three Thanksgiving's and three Christmas's in Iraq as a U.S. Army officer. I essentially posed your statement to him last week. In response, I received a 20-minute long tutorial from him about all of the different groups in in Iraq who are trying to kill each other (and him while he was there). He tells me as bad as ISIS is, the other groups in Iraq are not much better. ISIS seems to be the group who is most actively killing at the moment. Given the chance, there are a myriad of other groups who want to do the exact same thing. My son does not refer to the Iraqis as "Iraqis", he prefers to describe them as d--ebags, a catch-all term that describes everything about their "culture".
While I agree with you that ISIS can not be allowed to run rampant, the solution is not to have U.S. forces in Iraq. What we are going to have to do is go under the radar and play hardball with these animals. This will involve alliances and cooperation with extremist and thugs, but that is the hand we are dealt. The American people have been protected so well for so long (with the exception of 9/11 and the Boston Marathon) that they have no clue about the people who want to hurt us. The question is are Americans going to allow their government to do what needs to be done, and that is going to be ugly.
If the US wants to do something useful they can negotiate safe zones in all 3 regions (Kurd/Sunni/Shia) where refugees can go to avoid the fighting.
This is an ethnic/religious battle that has been brewing ever since Iraq's borders were drawn after WW1 and nothing the West does is going to stop them from fighting and the best we can hope for is helping those who want to escape it.
smith
@Sniffit-Tell it to H. Clinton, who stated it was Bush who was responsible for the withdraw and ending the war.
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I suppose that you've completely forgotten about The Surge in Iraq. We had well over 100,000 boots on the ground when Obama was first sworn in. I find your alternate histories fascinating.
This is a perfect example of why we need "Common Core" in our schools, because some people have lost track of the truth, and actual facts. We can have the misinformed going around misinforming and willfully sowing dissent.
Although Bush werent able to come to an agreement (blanket immunity for US servicement from Iraq prosecutions) with the Iraqis on leaving a small residual US forces in Iraq and subsequently had to order the complete withdrawal of all US forces from the country, Obama should have pushed harder to get it. He and them Dems weak on defense, support all Qaeda in Syria and MB in Egypt, should go back into Iraq guns blazing reverse ISIS gains, spents another trillions deficits, another 4500 KIAs and tens of thousands, another hall million Iraq deaths, destroyed the other half of Iraq so Iran can be empowered. Three years past and NOT a single US servicemen KIA in the Mideast is just unacceptable. Liberals weak on defense, only for used only taking out terrorists like bin Laden, Anwar al Lawaki-weak!
Hello all, I am a Vietnam Vet, and just like there Iraq you cannot tell the good guys from the bad guys. I am always willing to approve of defending folks from terrorist, pirates, war lords and there thugs. However the USA armed and trained a large contingency of Iraq soldiers to be able to defend them selves. We did at great service for the Iraq nation as far as being able to defend it self from a small group of terrisit like ISIS. This larger , strong, and brave Iraq soldiers were over run by a small group of muderous cut thoat terresist, I just do not understand how any Iraqy could let them selves be so easly taken and killed by ISIS. Why would we give them any more support then we have already done with the blood of The USA, British and all the others of the coalition, lost many men and women who gave their lives beside thousands of our soldier’s lively hood including my son a US marine with 3 tours in Iraq to defend Iraq and train it to defend it. We also outfitted the Iraq soldier with every manner of offensive military hardware, and training on how to use them. We threw millions into reconstruction as well. After all this with a now large and well trained Iraqi military, they fall like dominoes at the first engagement against a much smaller force of a night mare of murderous, cut throat criminals, willing to kill anyone “men, Women and innocent children” that get in there way by not being one them.
If the Iraqis cannot get together to defend and put up some type of protection for their children, wife’s, and family members, then why should we get involved. ISIS which is a small group of cutthroat murderous barbarians takes whole cities away from a much larger group of Iraqi soldiers who crumble and runs away. The ISIS group kills hundreds of Iraqi civilian and Iraq military who get in their way and shows it in TV. What is wrong with this picture?
Hmmm, whazzat?
Maybe problem was that neocons did not have a clue as to what they were doing when they began this mess? Oil will be drilled, we will be greeted as liberators. Now Malaki wants Obama to be his neocon nanny and bail him out. Maybe Malaki needs to pull himself up by his own bootstraps after US spend lots of money on him, With Neocon ideas and our money, the Right can do no wrong.
Now, this is what our pal Gundy would be saying if he actually had some sense. However, that supposed that something other than brain stem functions are at work.
The only way to quell the fighting in Iraq, and probably most of the Middle East, is to simply nuke them all. Short of that, there is nothing anybody can do because they are all just hell bent on killing one another, and any other non-believer. Or we can just let them go at it and then nuke the winner because when they are done killing each other so that they then don't come after us AGAIN.
bush handed obama an iraq that held elections and was relatively peaceful. bush had done all the work, signed the deal to leave, etc. all the messiah had to do was to negotiate a status of forces agreement. that was it. leave enough guys there to ensure this very thing wouldn't happen because the military had warned it could. but nooooo, that little task wasn't even doable for the great campaign fund rasier in chief. his incompetence is rearing its ugly head once again. electiong incompetent idiots to the white house has consequences people.
Tony D
The only way to quell the fighting in Iraq, and probably most of the Middle East, is to simply nuke them all. Short of that, there is nothing anybody can do because they are all just hell bent on killing one another, and any other non-believer. Or we can just let them go at it and then nuke the winner because when they are done killing each other so that they then don't come after us AGAIN.
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That gets MY vote.
I'm assuming all the repubs out there who think we should do more in Iraq have all enlisted.
*crickets*
@Confused
So according to the article a majority of Republicans want to do more in Iraq. Isn't that the same party who wants a smaller government along with less money spent and lower deficits? I'm confused
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Republicans like bigger government when it is for war or for moral legislation to tell people how to live.
It is for smaller government when they don't like part of it, or it is embarrassing to Obama to say so.
US cannot just bomb out ISIS a Sunni group when US failed to act and stop the genocide of Sunnies in Syria by a communist Shia dictator. If US act now against ISIS in Iraq that will make rallying cry for them to recruit more and the moderate Sunnies who are being killed by Asad barrel bombs will invite ISIS all over Syria and that will be a nightmare scenario. The solution is to address the legitimate sunni grievance in the region.