{"id":12096,"date":"2011-10-05T06:28:56","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T14:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=12096"},"modified":"2011-10-05T09:14:55","modified_gmt":"2011-10-05T17:14:55","slug":"pew-bias-poll-says-6-in-10-vets-have-isolationist-inclinations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/05\/pew-bias-poll-says-6-in-10-vets-have-isolationist-inclinations\/","title":{"rendered":"Pew Bias? Poll says 6 in 10 vets have &#8216;isolationist inclinations&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>I originally posted this today at The American Conservative blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/05\/pew-poll-says-6-in-10-vets-have-isolationist-inclinations\/\" target=\"_blank\">@TAC<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Buried in an amazing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewsocialtrends.org\/2011\/10\/05\/war-and-sacrifice-in-the-post-911-era\/3\/#chapter-2-attitudes-of-post-911-veterans?src=prc-headline\" target=\"_blank\">poll released by the Pew Research Center<\/a> today that says 1 in 3 post-9\/11 veterans believe the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were \u2018not worth fighting,\u2019 is an assertion that 6 in 10 such veterans polled also have \u2018isolationist inclinations\u2019 simply because they believe \u201cthe United States should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This bit of editorializing by Pew is interesting, and shows how successful the establishment\/neoconservative message machine has been in propagating the belief that anyone who wants to pull back from our global military adventures to concentrate on the devolution of our fiscal stability at home is an \u201cisolationist.\u2019 The outrageous thing is that here, we are actually talking about people who<em> fought in the wars<\/em>. Those pushing the \u2018isolationist\u2019 meme with such vigor \u2014 think <em>Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Steven Hayes<\/em> \u2013\u00a0 have never picked up a gun, much less sat in a line to pick up a measly prescription at a VA pharmacy. Sure, Sen. John McCain, who likes to fling around the isolationist charge quite a bit, was a Navy pilot and POW, but he\u2019s still fighting Vietnam, and thinks every war is worth a go today, and is willing to put every last man and woman in harm\u2019s way to prove it.<\/p>\n<p>But when 1 in 3 soldiers say fighting the wars was \u201cnot worth it,\u201d especially those who leave countries still teetering on the brink, come home to apathy and no jobs\u00a0 (11.5% unemployment rate for post-9\/11 vets), marriages on the rocks (51%), disconnected from their children (44%) and suffering from post-traumatic stress (37%), I\u2019d say their \u201cinclinations\u201d to refocus on the homefront are much better informed than the elitist warmongers whose dirtless fingernails have been drumming conference tables for the last 10 years, not the butt of a weapon or a bedside table at Walter Reed.<\/p>\n<p>No, it\u2019s not isolationist, it\u2019s realistic.<\/p>\n<p>But don\u2019t think these vets have gone soft on war or the military as an institution: \u201c84% of all post-9\/11 veterans who served in a war zone would advise a young person to join (the military),\u201d according to Pew.<\/p>\n<p>And the beat goes on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I originally posted this today at The American Conservative blog, @TAC Buried in an amazing poll released by the Pew Research Center today that says 1 in 3 post-9\/11 veterans believe the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were \u2018not worth fighting,\u2019 is an assertion that 6 in 10 such veterans polled also have \u2018isolationist inclinations\u2019 simply [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,80,10],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-12096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-us-military","category-war-party"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12096"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12109,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12096\/revisions\/12109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12096"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}