Polls & Research

Iraq Will Be Regarded as Failure, Say Americans

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Most people in the United States believe the coalition effort will be recalled in a negative light in the future, according to a poll by Rasmussen Reports. 57 per cent of respondents think the mission in Iraq will be seen as a failure in the long run, while 29 per cent think the war will be deemed a success.

The coalition effort against Saddam Hussein's regime was launched in March 2003. At least 3,726 American soldiers have died during the military operation, and more than 27,500 troops have been wounded in action.

In December 2005, Iraqi voters renewed their National Assembly. In May 2006, Shiite United Iraqi Alliance member Nouri al-Maliki officially took over as prime minister.

On Aug. 22, U.S. president George W. Bush said withdrawing American troops from Iraq would bring grim consequences for Iraqis, and compared the situation with the time the U.S. retreated from Vietnam in 1975. Bush declared to an audience of war veterans: "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like boat people, re-education camps and killing fields."

Bush's choice of words sparked reactions in Vietnam, where some politicians disagreed with the American president's assessment. On Aug. 23, Hanoi resident Vu Huy Trieu—a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam—said: "Doesn't he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people? Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn't prolonged except Bush."

The American military intervention in Vietnam left more than 1.5 million dead from 1964 to 1975, including 58,226 U.S. soldiers.

Polling Data

In the long run, will the U.S. mission in Iraq be seen as a success or a failure?