Legislators, Pollsters See Limits to Public Support of U.S. Role

WASHINGTON — At town meetings from coast to coast over the last few days, members of Congress have been hearing the same response whenever they ask how people feel about the prospects of U.S. involvement in a Middle East war:

“There’s a thundering silence,” said Rep. Dave Nagle (D-Iowa).

“Ask them about the savings and loan crisis and they will go on for hours,” Nagle explained. “But you really have to work hard to get them to talk about this. “

That silence, according to pollsters, represents a serious potential danger for President Bush as he plots his strategy in the Middle East over the next few months.

Although most American voters and members of Congress--Democrats as well as Republicans--appear to support what the President has done so far to check Iraqi aggression, many seem decidedly uneasy about the possibility of war and uncertain as to whether they can support U.S. military involvement in a protracted conflict.

“People are very scared--this looks too much like Vietnam,” said Sen. Alan J. Dixon (D-Ill.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Polling data and interviews with lawmakers suggest that Bush risks losing political support for his deployment of U.S. troops in the Middle East if Americans come to believe that he is leading them into another Vietnam.

And members of Congress say that if he hopes to maintain solid political backing for this operation, the President must adopt a long-term game plan that contains three fundamental--and politically important--elements:

He must explore every possible avenue for resolving the conflict diplomatically. He must maintain strong international support for his actions. And, if the current standoff should erupt into actual war, he must use all the military resources available in an effort to win the battle as quickly as possible.

Like Nagle, Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) reports an eerie silence in her Marin County district. Her office telephones, which ordinarily would be ringing continually during such a time of crisis, are strangely quiet.

“People are glued to this thing--they are scared, and they don’t know what the answer is,” she said.

To pollster Celinda Lake, this is a sure sign that public opinion is still very much in flux and that the American people have been slow to decide exactly how they feel about recent developments in the Middle East.

“Judgment has been suspended,” Lake said. “People have rallied around for now, but they have not yet made a judgment about it.”

Recent polls show that women and members of minority groups are more reluctant than white males to support U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. Women traditionally have been less supportive of military conflict--particularly if it means that their sons must go to war. And pollsters say many members of minority groups apparently believe that the money spent on war could be better invested at home.

Even so, a substantial number of members of Congress are convinced that the country will overwhelmingly support U.S. involvement in a Middle East war, provided that the U.S. action is in response to a clear provocation by Iraq and that the conflict is concluded quickly.

But some military experts in Congress contend that Bush would be making a mistake to retaliate.

“I don’t see a military option that can achieve an objective that you can secure,” said Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), a member of both the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees. “It’s going to be a diplomatic solution, if there’s a solution at all.”

One potential problem that the President may face is that, for the moment, Americans still seem uncertain about Bush’s objective in sending troops to Saudi Arabia--that is, whether he is merely trying to halt Iraqi aggression or preserve a key source of American oil as well.

Working in his favor is that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein makes such a perfect villain in American eyes. Hussein’s behavior and his detention of foreign citizens have already helped to galvanize American public opinion.

“Right now they see the objective as stopping a tyrant, whom they see as Hitler,” said Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), also an Armed Services Committee member, agrees. “People understand the nature of Saddam Hussein,” he said. “There’s a great deal of trust in the military and a great deal of trust in the President’s judgment.”

But some lawmakers fear that Bush may encounter some difficulty in trying to persuade the public that the military intervention was necessary to protect U.S. oil interests in the gulf, despite the serious damage that a cutoff of Middle East oil supplies--or sharply higher prices--might wreak.

Nagle points out that oil companies are so unpopular in some regions that the public may not appreciate the need to ensure steady oil supplies. “People are steamed at the oil companies, and who wants to go to war to protect their profits?” he said.

Moreover, Dixon predicts that support for Bush will begin to slide if oil prices continue to skyrocket. “People don’t want to pay $3 for gas,” he said. “If (gasoline prices) go up a whole lot, he’d better have a good explanation why.”

Ironically, Dixon says Bush’s case may be helped by an apparently widespread misimpression--which has shown up in recent focus groups in Iowa and Nebraska--that the United States receives as much as 40% of its oil from the Middle East. Although the figure is overblown--the actual amount is 13%--it could bolster public support for Bush’s action, she suggests.

Whatever the problems, the White House apparently has played its hand well so far, at least as far as the political aspects of the Middle East crisis are concerned, lawmakers and pollsters agree.

Virtually everyone on Capitol Hill praises Bush for the way he has handled the situation so far, says Ohio’s Kasich. “He’s conducted it like a maestro.”

Rep. Dante B. Fascell (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says Bush’s ability to win broad international support for the operation is “a really outstanding achievement” of his Administration.

It has “laid the groundwork for a real bipartisan foreign policy,” Fascell said.

But some members of Congress fear that the Middle East operation may be becoming too “Americanized”--a development that will surely undermine bipartisan support for the U.S. deployment.

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), who heads the House Armed Services panel’s military installations subcommittee, says U.S. troops should not have been deployed to the region unless they were under a U.N. flag.

“If the focus is kept international--the world versus Saddam Hussein, not George Bush versus Saddam Hussein--it will be OK,” said Boxer, also an Armed Services Committee member. “If the war is Americanized, Congress will have problems with it.”

Oklahoma’s McCurdy says the President should not hesitate to withdraw from the whole operation if other countries begin to back out. “If the Egyptians, Moroccans, Syrians and French head home, the United States should not be far behind,” he said.

Bush also must leave open a way to settle the conflict diplomatically if he wants continued support in Congress, lawmakers warn. “I think it’s important that we have a light at the end of the tunnel--a diplomatic way out or at least a plan,” Boxer said.

Likewise, Bush’s support could quickly evaporate if American troops remain in the Middle East too long. Memories of Vietnam will begin to haunt Bush if they stay a year or two, as Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has suggested.

“By Christmas, the President won’t be very popular if they’re still there,” Dixon said.

Many members of Congress have constituents whose loved ones are being held hostage in Kuwait and Baghdad. In addition, polls indicate that an overwhelming percentage of Americans are concerned about these men, women and children being used as pawns of war by Iraq.

But Bush may not be prevented by public and congressional opinion from striking at military targets where Americans are being held.

“If it were something that would advance our cause, Americans would understand it,” Skelton said. “People are fed up with their recollections of the Iranian hostages. People say: ‘Never again.’ ”

For now, however, all sides agree that Bush’s supporters and his opponents alike are united by one overriding sentiment: a desire for the President to succeed in the Middle East. As Boxer puts it: “I just hope he handles it well--because there is a hell of a lot at stake here.”