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Public Opinion & Persian Gulf War

The decision to go to war is a difficult one for any President. The question faced is whether that decision is made entirely on the basis of a perceived military need and to what degree public opinion influences the decision. The matter has been raised recently with reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina as it seems that the administration may be holding back from doing something to help the Serbs while ascertaining the trend in public opinion. It is likely that politicians have always been concerned with how the public would react to a declaration of war, but that does not mean that Presidents have always tried to determine that reaction beforehand as a way of deciding whether or not to declare war. In an age in which polling has become a science and an on-going process for news organizations, candidates, and government agencies, and since leaders know that they can take the pulse of the public, they usually will do so. How important is this process in making the decision about the use of military force?

There is no doubt that public opinion becomes extremely important after a war has been declared, and Presidents know this from the start. In the recent Persian Gulf War, the administration worked to shape public opinion and to garner support for its policies. Operation Desert Storm was viewed as one of the signal successes of the Bush Administration, in part because of this effort to shape the way the story was told. The war had its critics, but in general it was seen as (and touted as by the Bush Administration) a necessary action, a well-coordinated military operation, and an instance of American success after many years of failures, or at best inaction. The war produced an environmental nightmare as the Iraqi forces tried to destroy the Kuwaiti oil fields by setting them on fire and by spilling some of the oil reserves into the waters of the Gulf. While it was acknowledged that environmental economic issues were involved at...

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Public Opinion & Persian Gulf War. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:13, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692293.html