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Bush reclaims some support for Iraq

In his final year in office, President George W. Bush regained some lost ground in support from troops on the war in Iraq, a shift that may contribute to efforts to restore his legacy on the defining foreign policy decision of his presidency, this year’s Military Times survey shows.

Forty-five percent of active-duty respondents said they approve of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, an increase of 5 percentage points from last year. And 70 percent of respondents said the U.S. is very likely or somewhat likely to succeed in Iraq, a bump of 8 percentage points over the previous year.

Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who specializes in civil-military relations, said Bush’s decision in January 2007 to surge more troops in Baghdad and other parts of the country has reduced violence and reclaimed the possibility of success in Iraq.

“They’re looking positive because General [David] Petraeus and the surge strategy has turned that situation around,” Feaver said.

Army Spc. Ryan C. Smith, a petroleum supply specialist with the 603rd Transportation Company at Fort Polk, La., who returned in October from his second deployment to Iraq, said conditions on the ground have improved.

During his first tour in 2004, Smith said, he heard gunfire almost every day from insurgents battling in Baqubah. His brigade, he said, lost more than 20 soldiers. On his most recent tour, he said, his unit lost just three soldiers in a “billion-to-one shot” mortar strike on a truck.

“That just tells me that the violence is getting down,” Smith said. “The people in Iraq believe that success is coming — not guaranteed — but coming.”

Among troops, Bush’s approval rating on handling the war peaked at 63 percent in 2004, then dropped to 54 percent in 2005 and bottomed out at 35 percent in 2006 before rebounding last year and again this year, according to previous Military Times surveys.

Bush’s job approval rating as president remained unchanged among respondents at 48 percent, down from a high of 71 percent in 2004. That compares to 29 percent of the general public, according to a recent USA Today/Gallup poll.

Moreover, the percentage of respondents who said the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq dropped to 42 percent, down from 46 percent last year and a high of 64 percent in 2003.

Feaver attributed that figure in part to the collapse of the rationale for launching a pre-emptive strike against Iraq — to remove weapons of mass destruction — and to a general sense of missed opportunities during the fighting of the war.

But the verdict could change over time, Feaver said.

“The fact that that number is sticky and unlikely to move for the next half-decade does not mean it won’t ever move again,” he said, “particularly if Iraq comes out like South Korea.”