The Least Popular War In History

Here's why there's been no rally-round-the-flag effect on Iran.

The president makes sure to wear one of his dumbass branded ball caps during the most somber duty imaginable, witnessing the dignified transfer of the body of a soldier who died in his misbegotten war. (photo by Emily J. Hughes)

Donald Trump has always believed in the value of superlatives. Everything he does is the greatest, the biggest, the most spectacular anywhere in the world or anyone has ever seen. So it is appropriate that he has now succeeded in launching the most unpopular war in American history.

For many decades, the common wisdom was that the prospect of war produces a “rally-round-the-flag” effect, as Americans unite behind their government in the face of external threats. What Trump is demonstrating, however, is that the effect isn’t just a lever you can pull; there isn’t anything inherent in an international conflict that produces that result. Given the right circumstances and the right president — or more precisely, the wrong circumstances and president — the public may simply decline to rally round the flag.

Let’s begin by comparing opinions on this war to previous ones. Here’s a handy chart from the New York Times showing how much this war stands out:

I wouldn’t have included Kosovo, Libya, and perhaps even Grenada (which took all of a week), not only because of their scale but because they weren’t really presented to the public as large conflicts necessary to secure America’s immediate national security. Which is one of the factors that produces the rally-round-the-flag effect: It’s essential for the public to believe they are threatened in some real way, and the war is necessary to confront that threat. And as my friend Sean Aday (who studies media, public opinion, and war) reminded me when I checked in with him, the rally-round-the-flag effect has never been as powerful as most people assume; it’s contingent on many variables that might or might not be present in a given conflict.

With that in mind, I’d point to a few critical factors that determine how much the public is going to support the war:

1. Perception of a threat that makes the conflict necessary

2. Potential risks and rewards

3. Popularity of the president

4. Visible success or failure once the conflict begins

In most of our previous major wars, the threat was at least based in something real. Korea and Vietnam were presented as part of our Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union, which had the power to annihilate us; Afghanistan and Iraq were offered as a response to 9/11, in which 3,000 Americans were killed and which had upended all our lives. The first Gulf War was sold not as a response to a threat but as a humanitarian intervention on behalf of Kuwait; we’d go in there with our mighty military, kick the stuffing out of a country that had no chance against us, and be hailed as heroes (which is pretty much what happened). In that case, the risks were small and the rewards at least meaningful.

But the president has to have a well of good will he can call upon to make the case, which Trump doesn’t have. If a popular president tells the public we have to go to war, the response is going to be very different than if it comes from an unpopular president. Here’s how Trump compares to his predecessors:

I’ve taken Gallup poll results from as close as possible to a week before the conflict began and a week after. I used passage of the Tonkin Gulf resolution to date the beginning of the Vietnam War, and since Gallup has stopped measuring Trump’s approval, for the current war I’m using the FiftyPlusOne average. Trump’s approval before and after the war began are identical, which is why the “before” data point isn’t visible.

The Bushes did both get boosts after their wars against Saddam Hussein began, which is probably explained by the fact that 1) they were popular at the time to begin with, and 2) initially, the war seemed to be going great. On the other hand, if you’re unpopular and you don’t even bother trying to make a coherent argument for war, and it doesn’t seem to be a smashing success, the public is not going to go along.

And while Trump could have tried to persuade the public that we’re doing this to liberate the genuinely oppressed Iranian people, he can’t bring himself to do that; here he is threatening to utterly destroy Iran as “Death, Fire, and Fury will reign [sic] upon them,” which does not exactly communicate “We’re here to help” to either the Iranian or American people:

War is not inherently popular

If the lack of an immediate and durable rally-round-the-flag effect is at all surprising, it may be not just because it’s a familiar bit of conventional wisdom but because for so many of us, the Iraq War was the formative experience on this question. When it was being debated in 2002 and 2003, most Democrats probably understood that the Bush administration was lying about the threat from Iraq and deluded about how wonderfully everything would turn out. But most of the key leaders in the party, including the entire congressional leadership and future presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Biden, clearly believed that opposing any war at its outset would be political suicide. They didn’t want to look weak, which led them to become even weaker.

Supporting that war was an act of moral cowardice, but somewhat understandable as a political matter, since the war was in fact popular before it began. Of course, one of the reasons it was widely popular was precisely because Democrats joined Republicans in supporting it, which signaled to their party’s rank-and-file that it was a good idea. Today, most Democratic politicians remember that experience and have been unwilling to cheer for Trump’s war, which has encouraged their base to reject it.

To a significant extent, everything changes when the war begins and the reality on the ground becomes undeniable. In Iraq, we saw a devastatingly effective propaganda campaign to sell it beforehand, but once the war began, the administration’s lack of strategic thinking and deep incompetence quickly revealed themselves.

In the Iran case, both incompetence and lack of strategic vision have been evident from the get-go. There hasn’t been anything one could call a battlefield defeat, since we’re just pummeling the country from the air. But Americans are looking at what’s happening and saying, OK, so we blew up a bunch of stuff. And? Bombing a girls’ school and killing 165 people, mostly children, didn’t help. We killed the Supreme Leader, who has been duly replaced with another Supreme Leader.

In short, to return to the list of key factors above, here’s what’s influencing people’s understanding of the war:

1. There was never any widespread belief that Iran was an immediate threat to the U.S.

2. The risks of regional instability are ample, while there is no obvious reward for the U.S. in this war.

3. The president is deeply unpopular.

4. There has been little in the way of visible success, even if our bombs are (mostly) hitting their targets. Here at home, the most obvious effect of the war is a dramatic increase in oil prices, which is something people really don’t like.

Add it up, and you have the least popular war in history, at least at this stage. It’s hard to know whether the administration thought the public would rally to the cause; they do tend to delude themselves about how beloved Trump is and how much the public supports everything he does. But I wouldn’t be surprised if behind the scenes, most of the people around Trump knew that this wasn’t going to go well. And unless Iran quickly transforms itself into a liberal democracy that is a force of stability and peace in the region, it’s unlikely that the war will get any more popular as time goes on. It’ll be just one more superlative to add to Trump’s list.

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