Take a quick glimpse over at the the Iraq section of pollingreport. What you will see from nearly every polling firm are long tables showing the trend of answers to questions which are variations on one or more of the following:

• Do you approve or disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq?
  
• Did the U.S. make the right decision to go to war?
  
• Has the war made the United Sates safer from terrorism?
  
• Should the U.S. keep troops in Iraq or bring them home?

Simply put, these are the wrong questions. My problem with these questions is that three of these four do not even bother to ask people what we should do in Iraq now. The only question that actually asks what we should do now is the "keep troops" vs "bring home" question, and it psoes the question in an hysterical all or nothing manner. This is extremely frustrating and, I would argue, tottally irresponsible. We cannot take actions in the past: we can only take actions now and in the future. Thus, shouldn't it follow that it is more important to ask the public what we should do in Iraq in the future rather than what they think about how we have been doing in Irq so far? Iraq is not an academic question. It is happening now. We need to ask the public what they believe should be done, and to do so in a respectiful manner that does not assumes total withdrawl and never withdrawing are the only possible courses of action.

Both Democrats and Republicans, but mostly Republicans, have worked hard to ignore the public's cry for a timetable in Iraq, and to frame the debate about future action in Iraq as either a timetable vs. no timetable debate, or a total withdrawl vs. no withdrawal debate. That, however, is not where the public stands. This issue for the public is neither whether or not there should be a timetable, nor whether or not we should withdrawl all troops now or not. Instead of either question, the issue for the public is how long we stay in Iraq. You would have to be extremely thick-headed to not realize that public support for the war is heavily contingent upon the length of the war:

Newsweek Poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Aug. 2-4, 2005. N=1,004 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

"For how long would you personally support keeping large numbers of U.S. military personnel in Iraq: less than one more year, one to two years, three to five years, six to 10 years, more than 10 years, or as long as it takes to achieve U.S. goals in Iraq?"

As long as it takes    26
Three years or more    32
One year or more       45
Less than one year     50
Unsure			5

Only 26% of the country rejects the notion of a time limit on the war outright. This is a total rejection of Bush's position. June 22, 2004: I recognize that Americans want our troops to come home as quickly as possible. So do I. Some contend that we should set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces. Let me explain why that would be a serious mistake. Setting an artificial timetable would send the wrong message to the Iraqis, who need to know that America will not leave before the job is done. It would send the wrong message to our troops, who need to know that we are serious about completing the mission they are risking their lives to achieve. And it would send the wrong message to the enemy, who would know that all they have to do is to wait us out. We will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed, and not a day longer. This, however, is not to say that a majority supports immediate and total withdrawal either. According to Gallup, right now 33% of the poulation supports immediate and total withdrawal, but that is by far the highest number they have found in support of that position this year. Since January, the pecentage of people supporting that position has varied from 17%-33%. Despite the questions asked by polling firms, the largest portion of the public is somewhere in between these two positions. Since I favor total pullout in about eighteen months, I myself am in between those two positions.

Polling firms play an important role in shaping the national debate. However, with the exception of the Newsweek poll already quoted, and the Harris poll from June, none of them have ever bothered to ask the American public just how long they think the United Sates should stay in Iraq. They continue to ask the academic and moral question about whether or not what we did in early 2003 was the right thing to do. They continue to accept the Bush administration and Democratic foreign policy establishment line that the main debate right now is whether or not to have a timetable. That may be the debate in D.C., but that is not the debate nationwide. Once and a while, a poll with actual dates does slip out. When it does, it shows that the overwhelming majority of the public wants to end the war within two years or less. Such polls do not slip out often, however, and the debate on our future actions in Iraq remains constrained by the D.C. bubble.

Since the start of the war, polling firms have asked the public whether or not they thought the decision to go to war was correct more than five hundred times. Further, in that same time frame, they have asked the public if they approve or disapprove of Bush's handling of the war more than 1,000 times. By contrast, they have asked the public how long they would like to continue fighting the war only twice. Considering that how long we intend to keep fighting the war is the number one issue when it comes to Iraq right now, it is the responsibility of those who frame the debate to at least pose that question to the American people. That question is a lot more important than whether or not we think what we did two and a half years ago was the right thing to do, because we can't do anything about that now.

Don't hide it people. Let's have this discussion. Just ask us.