The Daily Background
| Americans don’t want military strike on Iran, blame Bush for oil prices
by Arlen Parsa
According to a new poll conducted by the respected Pew Research Center, reveals several interesting findings about American public opinion. Most Americans expect that Iran would like to develop nuclear weapons (no surprise), but there are some surprising findings. From the results writeup:
… Yet the public overwhelmingly wants the United Nations, not the United States, to take the lead in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. By greater than three-to-one (72%-21%), more Americans favor the U.N. playing the lead role on this issue.
And Americans show a decided preference for non-military approaches in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Nearly two-thirds (64%) favor the U.N. and other leading nations imposing tough economic sanctions on Iran. The public is evenly divided over the idea of providing Iran with nuclear energy technology if they agree to terminate their nuclear program. More aggressive steps for dealing with Iran  supporting opposition groups in an effort to overthrow the government, or U.S. attacks on military targets in Iran  draw less support.
The poll also concludes that ‘far more Republicans’ than either Democrats or independents want to bomb Iran, but only 46% of Republicans are in favor of a military strike. Only about a quarter of Dems and independents think that’s a viable strategy.
The war in Iraq is the largest concern that Americans have according to the poll, but high energy costs are closing in, only 4 points behind. Almost 70% of Americans are following high gas prices closely in the news. Here’s where the blame falls:
The public continues to hold oil companies responsible for high gas prices (31%), but President Bush also gets much of the blame. A quarter of Americans volunteer that the president or his administration are most to blame for high gas prices. That compares with 3% who cite Congress and 4% who volunteer the government more generally.
Roughly four-in-ten Democrats (41%) point to Bush as being most to blame for rising gas prices, compared with 21% of independents and 11% of Republicans. In this regard, the president is far more accountable for gas prices than is Congress even within his own partisan base (just 4% of Republicans blame Congress.)
Both the Vice President and the President are oil men, and the President once said “There’s no such thing as being too closely aligned with the oil industry“. Anyways, you can read the full poll findings writeup here.
