The Iraq war has had an inarguably divisive effect on the American people, but the one area on which most on either side of the debate seem to be united is in supporting the troops.
Whether with magnetic yellow-ribbon bumper stickers, care packages, or protests to bring them home, most Americans have indignantly claimed that they - and often they alone - support the 135,000 or so soldiers in Iraq at any given time.
Amazingly, with all these diverse groups claiming to represent the interests of the average American soldier, no one seems to have bothered to figure out what exactly the average American soldier believes are his or her interests - until last week.
Zogby International, one of the pre-eminent polling organizations in the world, announced it had conducted the first-ever scientific poll of troops serving in a war zone, and the results are very surprising.
It's not so suprising because 72 percent believe the United States should withdraw within the next year - and more than a third of those favor immediate withdrawal. Though this is a significant point, and should be taken into account by the politicians making policy that affects these soldiers, the far more disturbing figure is buried deeper in the poll's figures.
While less than one-quarter of the troops believe "establishing a democracy that can be a model for the Arab world" is a main or major reason for the war, an amazing 85 percent of American forces in Iraq believe they are there, in the words of the poll, "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks." In addition, 77 percent also believe the goal was to stop Saddam from protecting al-Qaida in Iraq.
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Where did they get this information? How could it be so widespread by accident? No one in the high ranks of the Bush administration has ever explicitly made the former claim- for which there is no evidence - and both the nonpartisan 9/11 Commission and President Bush himself publicly acknowledged there was no evidence of the latter.
Soldiers should never be in a position in which they put their lives on the line for the wrong reasons, and it is tragic that most of our troops are in such a position now.
Whether you believe the antiwar crowd or the stay-the-course supporters are truly acting in the interests of American soldiers, anyone who implicitly or explicitly claims such misleading reasons for fighting and dying in Iraq is most certainly not.
Chris Narkun
Opinion editor
