Seventy-one percent of Iraqi citizens want the US to withdraw troops within a year, according to a recent World Public Opinion poll. An “overwhelming majority believes that the US military presence in Iraq is provoking more conflict than it is preventing and there is growing confidence in the Iraqi army,” the WPO report said. Also, the survey showed that six in 10 Iraqis support attacks on US-led forces because more Iraqi ethnic groups think the US government plans to keep permanent bases in that country. Among different ethnic groups, opinion differs on how soon American troops should leave, although no group favors an open-ended commitment to stay. Only nine percent of Iraqis favor such a plan compared with a January 2006 survey that found 29 percent favored a long commitment. Read the complete survey results here.
The U.S. military needs to wake up to the fact that global dominance is no longer a viable strategy for national defense, because pursuing that unrealizable goal is making the country less safe, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said April 22. Emerging defense technologies like swarms of…