These polls will frustrate many whites living in certain geographic localities, because it will appear that the anti-war support is much more widespread. However, the polls showing only 20% of whites opposing the war are correct. (For countries easier to attack than Iraq, the figure would be even lower than 20%.) It's just a matter of where we look. The majorities of all people in major parts of the East Coast and all of California oppose the war. 41% oppose the war on the East Coast as a whole. When we factor in the New Hampshires and other rural East Coast counties of Amerikkkans that support Bush, it means that in the major East Coast cities, opposition is in the vast majority.
Countless conservatives across the country are invoking 911 as a reason for the war, instead of a reason against the war. Instead of coming to us and apologizing for supporting the president who armed, financed and trained Bin Laden, these conservatives and "support our troops" warmongers come to us in outrage asking why we don't support yet more CIA and military maneuvers just like the past ones that created Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. We remind them it was their president, not our government in charge of creating Bin Laden and giving Saddam Hussein chemical and biological weapons in the first place.
Even with over 70% of Amerikkkans in favor of the war, New Yorkers still disagree. "A poll released this week showed that just after the conflict began, New Yorkers became more supportive of the war and President Bush's handling of the conflict. Still, even as about 70 percent of all Americans back the war, just 47 percent of New Yorkers support it, while 49 percent oppose it," reported the Chicago Tribune.(2) So much for the conservative idiots who think that Californians oppose the war, because they haven't been to the World Trade Center.(3)
In California, the Los Angeles Times reported on March 6th, "With the United States on the precipice of war, Californians disapprove of President Bush's handling of Iraq, and half do not trust him to make the right decision on whether to take military action, a new Los Angeles Times Poll has found.
"Three in five Californians believe the U.S. should not invade Iraq without the United Nations' backing, the poll found. . . . only one in four Californians said the president should take military action now rather than allowing the U.N. arms inspectors to continue their work in Iraq."(4)
Even within California, a bare majority of whites in the four-county area of Sacramento supported the invasion even before it started, while only 44% of "non-whites" did. Yolo County opposed the war and the other three supported it for a total of 51% supporting the war in the Sacramento area, just before the invasion started. (2) Again, what this means is that in the suburbs and rural areas, the war has support, but in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the opposition is overwhelming, whether the people in those cities even know it or not. The same poll of Sacramento found 65% support for the invasion in the Sierra area of Nevada, El Dorado County.(4)
Those of us forgetting the gun-toting, SUV-driving, pickup-truck owning white trash and lower-middle class whites in the rural and interior parts of the country simply will not have an accurate picture of what is happening. The highest support for the war comes from the Bush voters in the South, Midwest and non-coastal West in the $30,000 to $50,000 income category.
There seems to be a dispute where Latinos stand. A poll prior to the war showed that 60% of New York and California "Hispanic" registered voters opposed the war. Another poll showed that 43% opposed the war and 48% supported in February. A more recent survey shows 67% "Hispanic" support for the war on Iraq.(5)
*56% of gays/lesbians/bisexuals/transsexuals oppose the idea of going to war without
UN approval and without UN inspectors finding weapons of mass destruction.
*Only 31% of gays/lesbians/bisexuals/transsexuals trust George W. Bush to make the correct
decisions on the Iraq question.(6)
*59% of Jews support the war, less than the average of 7 in 10, according to the
American Jewish Committee. MIM has tried to tell people
for a long time that there is a difference between Jews inside the U$A and those settling on land
in Palestine. 73% of I$raeli$ supported invading Iraq.(7)
A whopping 44% of liberals supports the war.(1) Along with the fact that Democrats are based in the "moderates" where 70% support the war, it is very clear that the end of this war has to originate from the "fringe"--and that's without mentioning where Democratic Party imperialist leaders stand, just the voters.
The petty-bourgeois tendency to vacillate wildly in serious wars characterizes U.$. views of war. "If there are hundreds of American casualties, support for the war drops to 62%, while 35% oppose it."(8) It's not that Amerikkkans oppose the war in principle. They just want their cheap gas and world dominance without killing too many Marines. At some number in the thousands of Marines dead and the war still going on, Amerikkkans will want out of the war.
Despite the huge Black-white gap for instance, there are countless of the brain-dead calling themselves "Marxist" (who know who they are without our naming them) who ask us why we separate the Black Nation from Amerikkka, why we don't just lump Black "workers" with white "workers." With the latest Daily Telegraph poll showing 83% English support for the war in Iraq, it's clear that there is more justification in calling England and Amerikkka one nation than Blacks part of the same United $tates. White exploiters differ not only in degree from oppressed Blacks. Thanks to peculiarities of history that Blacks have not forgotten, even more than current economic relations, there is a qualitative difference that should be sharpened, not confused, lest we throw away the basis of the anti-war movement and fail to confront the anti-war movement's real tasks surrounding national chauvinism, racism and attacks on the Third World in general, something we Maoists call dealing with the principal contradiction between oppressed nations and imperialism.
Notes:
1. http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr030328.asp ;
se also, http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030314-022023-3781r
2. "New York's 911 victims don't support war,"
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2003/03/28/build/war/74-911-support.inc
3. "David Houston, a self-described conservative from Tampa Bay, Fla., who was on a
monthlong vacation in California, said many people in the state struck him as
out of touch with the rest of America. 'It is obvious a lot of people here are
against the war,' he said. 'Of course, if a lot of them went to visit the World
Trade Center, they might think differently.'"
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/20/international/worldspecial/20WEST.html
4. "Many fault handling of Iraq," by Michael Finnegan, Los Angeles Times 06Mar2003.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/6284848p-7238619c.html ;
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/20/international/worldspecial/20WEST.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5062&en=57bc27c09eaa4511&ex=1048827600&partner=GOOGLE
5. http://www.trpi.org/press_rel.html; http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/1830709
6. http://www.advocate.com/new_news.asp?ID=8034&sd=03/15/03-03/17/03
7. http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/075/nation/In_the_Diaspora_and_in_Israel_opinions_vary+.shtml
8. http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=691