ABSTRACT
During a discussion about public support for U.S. military actions in Iraq in 2005,a student in one of our classes suggested this operation was only the third military campaign (besides the 1991 Gulf War and the 2001 war in Afghanistan) the majority of Americans supported since the 1960s. The student, who called himself a pragmatist, said he regretted the “belligerence” of the American people, who over the last 12 years were ready to solve international conflicts with force, an approach the public had previously opposed for many years. The student was right in only one part of his argument. Indeed, the majority of Americans supported military actions against Iraq in 1991 and in Afghanistan 10 years later. But they also approved of the use of force on many other occasions. He forgot to mention that in 1995 and 1999, the public approved the United States and the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia in response to that government’s brutal actions against Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. Most Americans supported the invasion of Grenada in 1983. Public opinion sided with the government when American troops arrested Manuel Noriega, the president of Panama, in his own country in 1989. Most Americans supported the U.S. bombing of the palace of the Libyan leader in 1986 and retaliation against Syrian troops in Lebanon in 1982. Most Americans, at least initially, supported the war in Vietnam in the mid-1960s.
