How did popular support for the war in Iraq change over time?

Answer 1

People in the USA gradually discovered that having made themselves the proud owners of Iraq was not the end but the beginning of their worries. The USA first of all acted less than cleverly by completely removing the country's political and military infrastucture and personnel and by disqualifying anyone from the formerly ruling Ba'ath Party (so: anyone with any administrative experience) from holding any office.

Having removed everyone who could have kept the peace apart from the US troops themselves, the USA found that great numbers of disgruntled and out-of-work Iraqi soldiers and officers quickly found employment with the several religious groups and tribes (IS for one is led by former Iraqi leaders and commanders) that used the power vacuum to get at each other's throats - or at the US and other "infidel occupation powers", as they saw them. The USA started to see more of their men killed in ambushes and suicide bombings than ever had died during the conquest of Iraq. All that loss of US life was moreover not leading to peace and political stability, nor to a puppet Iraqi Government that provided the USA with oil at discount prizes or with billions in rebuilding contracts.

So the US public quickly started to get the feeling that the boys in the US Army were 'dying for nothing' and that US presence mostly kept attracking the attention of local terrorists and gave Al Qaeda a new lease on life. It did not help that the new Iraqi President installed by the USA - although having spent many years in the US as a fugitive dissident to Saddam Hussein's regime - turned out being somewhat of a dictator himself, mostly fanning the existing feuds between Sunnite an Shi'ite muslims in Iraq instead of being a stabilizing force.

Even if we consider the war against Iraq as an initially justified retaliation for the terrorist 9/11 actions that were in fact perpetrated by Saudi and Egyptian terrorists (there are many dissident opinions on that justification, however) the public support for quick retaliation gradually changed into skepticism and lack of support for an occupation that did the USA no good at all, nevertheless costing billions of dollars in the process.