Liberal Dissonance

I clearly recall supporting our invasion of Afghanistan, but adamantly opposing invading Iraq. I felt at the time the case for WMDs hadn't been convincing, and certainly there didn't seem to be a clear link between Iraq and 9/11.

Then I read this paper discussing people's opinions and the 2006 elections, and I had to reconsider.

The paper's primary topic is how individual's views on the Iraq war affected the voting. It discusses the unprecedented polarization Bush's presidency has engendered (while his popularity among Dem's fell to single digits, and Independents to low double-digits, among republican's it remained around 80% ... which says everything one needs to know about whether he really is a uniter or a divider), and also discusses the forms of cognitive dissonance many conservatives suffer under (36% of FOX news viewers still believe the US discovered WMDs in Iraq) and folks like myself like to smugly mock, the really interesting part for me was the discussion of liberals reconstructing their recollections (this part begins on page 22).

Table 9 on page 24 sums everything up nicely. To summarize, surveys before the war found 46% of Democrats favored the Iraq war, 72% thought Iraq possessed WMDs, and 44% thought Saddam Hussein had been personally involved in 9/11. However, surveys taken last year asking people what they recalled of their views prior to the war found only 21% of Democrats remembered supporting the war, only 26% recalled thinking Iraq had WMDs, and a mere 14% recollect thinking Saddam had a hand in 9/11.

That, folks, is an example of cognitive dissonance. Clearly, a number of people have rearranged their memories based on what they think now, as opposed to what they actually felt at the time.

Of course, there is a difference between the dissonance liberals (and, to a lesser extent, independents) labor under, and that of conservatives - as the paper makes clear, the former group has been revising it's views as more information has come in (such as the fact Irag did not actually possess WMDs, and Saddam was not actually involved in 9/11), while the latter group has opted to retain its views and ignore contrary data.

I went and dug up some old correspondence of mine, which confirmed I did, in fact, oppose the Iraq war even prior to its beginning. At least on this topic, I am not revising my memories.