Note: That graphic illustrates the context of this post, not the topic.
Peter Baker, who has “covered Presidents at war since Bill Clinton’s intervention in the Balkans in the 1990s,” delivers a jaw-dropping example of dishonest Axis journalism in “Trump is the First Modern President to Take US to War Without Public Support.”(gift link). That’s its title on the Times home page: someone must have realized how slimy it was after the “analysis” was first posted, so now the article itself is headlined, “Wars Often Lose Public Support Over Time. Trump Started This One Without Much.” Either way, the sense that the Times, like the rest of the Axis of Unethical Conduct, is actively rooting for the President to fail is palpable. True, has been trying to make him fail regarding, well, everything, for a decade.
Baker’s rigged analysis hides the clear reason why Trump’s public approval of a bold military response to a rogue international evil-doer is low: “Traditionally, Americans stand behind their president when he first orders troops into battle,” he writes. Yes, he doesn’t write, and that was before, for the first time in American history, a President’s opposition and the mainstream media set out to strip a newly elected President of the traditional public approval of whomever is in the office from the moment this President was elected. Usually a new President has overwhelming support when he is inaugurated. Not Trump, in either term. Democrats and the media declared him an illegitimate President (that Electoral College thingy, and everyone knows Putin gor him elected) in 2016, and he had been tarred as Hitler and a “convicted felon” before his second term in 2024. That cloak of respect and honor had been a key feature in every President’s power since George Washington, and the Axis stripped it from Trump and, I believe, the office itself, permanently.
Ethics Alarms 
“Don’t do the right thing if it isn’t popular”
Trump recently said, “I don’t care about polls.” Bravo.
In case anyone asks, I support the military action against Iran. It is necessary and must be carried out to the bitter end.. Death to all who support the theocracy. Unconditional surrender must mean more than just laying down arms and signing a “loyalty oath”. The IDF must be left with every key to every door in Iran so they can deal with all the apparatus that could be used to build weaponsThe cost be damned….. lathes, mills, centrifuges … everything.
The cost be damned. The price of letting Iran go unchecked is way higher.
You may want to follow the following YouTube channel. It explains in detail the weaknesses of Iran’s ballistic missile program, and how the USA systematically destroys Iran’s ability to launch missiles.
I agree with those who support finally ending a 47 year old protracted war. It is high time we stopped allowing third world theocrats try to kill our people – and theirs – to achieve global religious domination.
Public support is a function of understanding the potential costs of being passive to cowardly bullies. Tell people time and again it is an illegal war and the ignorant will believe them. Polls too often ask leading questions that push people to answer a desired way. Moreover opinions are like brains everyone has one but that does not mean they are competent to render an opinion
Ugh. I intended to make the (one would think) obvious point that public opinion about war situations shouldn’t matter at all, since the public, as you say, only know what they hear from the news media and that’s not enough to make crucial policy decisions. When we are attacked, as in the cases of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. then the news tells them everything they think they have to know. I got pulled away from that point when my head exploded after the writer stooped to using Beschloss, that jerk.
“… public opinion about war situations shouldn’t matter at all …”
The operative word here is “shouldn’t”. But in a republic with a democratically chosen government and a free press we allow public opinion to matter. The USA lost the Vietnam war at the home front after Walter Cronkite called the war a “quagmire” even though the Tet offensive was a military failure for the NVA. Any war the USA fights carries the risk of losing votes in Congress, or losing elections followed by a next administration or Congress reversing the war efforts of the previous one.
The left and the media are using the same playbook to cause the U.S. to lose this Iran war they used to cause the U.S. to lose the Vietnam war. They might as well be the official Iranian news agency. All they report are successful Iranian drone strikes which are of absolutely no tactical, never mind strategic consequence.
And this is why the conventional wisdom about a President’s second term always being a flop has been turned on its head by Trump. The historian’s analysis was always that a lame duck President had diminished power. Trump is proving that being a lame duck is liberating.
Yes and this is also why I am disappointed Trump has not taken the opportunity to make a major speech detailing all the reasons this war is necessary.
Getting widespread support is worth a lot of effort. Ask Abe.
If someone asked me (….still waiting … 😉) the actual core of this issue is that those Founders did not envision an American Empire such as exists today. A world-level military that is a million times more consequential to a republic as the feared “standing armies”.
So it happens that the only moral democratic voice is the box populi. And it is folly to believe that military industrial interests will think and plan morally.
The Iran escapade has obvious features and benefits (if successful) but 1,000 hidden aspects that may not well be reconciled with original republican values.
The northern US power-center was transformed toward imperium as a result of the conquest and occupation of the South and that nefarious character as “nation builder” appeared then. It developed further with the Spanish American War and USA became the hegemonic power in the Caribbean. Talk about Americans lacking education! How easy you are unaware of the real facts of your real history. (And I have not even mentioned the invention of the modern corporate “person” which couldn’t ever have been morally visualized by the Founders).
You cannot simply give all these powers over to your or ANY government and tell people they must only passively observe and STFU!
Just think when the US legal immortal corporation-person melds with AI entity and personhood.
Another point. You don’t need leaders to take you where you want to go you need them to take you where you need to go.