Middle America goes sour over Iraq

By Richard Allen Greene
BBC News, Pennsylvania

The sprawling state of Pennsylvania is the kind of place George Bush's Republican party has to win if they are to keep control of Congress when Americans go to the polls next month.

It's a middle ground between north-eastern urban centres like New York and the declining industrial heartland of the Midwest, a place where small towns really do have churches, libraries and sweet shops on their main squares.

Americans with military ties debate the war in Iraq In pictures

"This is Middle America," says Barbara M Neill, a retired music teacher who now writes for the Laurel Mountain Post, a community newspaper in south-western Pennsylvania.

Although the region has traditionally voted for Democrats, locals "have traditional values and beliefs", and they support - and join - the military, Mrs Neill says.

"This is a patriotic area of the country," she adds.

But people here are confused about an issue that was once assumed to be a guaranteed vote-winner for the Republicans, she says - the war in Iraq.

Opinions have started to sour on the war as it has dragged on with no resolution in sight.

In addition, the Democrats may have found a way to blunt the Republicans' long-standing advantage on matters of national security.

At least 50 military veterans are running for office as Democrats nationwide this year, with three of them standing a good chance of pulling off upset victories in Pennsylvania.

Fighting history

John Peeler, a retired professor of political science at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, is working to support one of them.

Mr Carney is playing up his military record

Chris Carney, who is challenging an incumbent Republican for a seat in the House of Representatives in Mr Peeler's district, is an officer in the US Navy reserve.

"It's appealing to voters to have candidates with military experience," Mr Peeler argues. "Particularly with regard to Democrats, it reassures voters that they understand the issues."

He thinks Democratic challengers have a good chance against Republican incumbents at all levels in north-central Pennsylvania, where he lives.

That is despite the fact that his home county - Union County - has not backed a Democrat for president since the Republican party's first White House victory: Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

"This area is deeply and long-standing Republican. Both the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq were strongly supported around here," he says.

Mid-terms map: Pennsylvania Iraq shapes Congress race Send us your comments

"There was a great deal of sympathy and outrage after 9/11."

But, he says, the Democrats he is backing for state and national office "are running very strong and my guess would be that they are both going to win".

The reason, he says: "It's just obvious to everybody that things are not going well and there is no-one else to blame but the Republicans," since they control the White House and both houses of Congress.

He says voters blame the Republicans for difficulties in "Iraq, the Middle East, Afghanistan and the war on terror, which was their last trump card and which seems to be going against them".

Controversial call

Mr Carney also has the backing of one of Pennsylvania's highest-profile Democratic congressmen.

Jack Murtha grabbed international attention late last year by calling for the US to get its troops out of Iraq.

A Vietnam veteran known for backing the military, he did not fit the image of the effete urban liberal whom Republicans paint as the typical Democratic opponent of the war.

His stance has divided voters in Pennsylvania, the writer Mrs Neill says.

"My father thinks that Jack Murtha should run for president," but others could not disagree more, she adds.

Mr Sitler says no-one gains if Iraq "blows up"

"Some of my former students would say we absolutely need to support the troops in Iraq, and that President Bush is doing the right thing. He is not only talking the talk, but he is walking the walk."

Tom Sitler, 57, a pensioner in the picture-postcard pretty town of Ligonier, south-western Pennsylvania, would agree.

"Getting out now is not the answer," he says. "It's in no-one's interest to see Iraq blow up. We're the architects of what has happened there and we've got to see it through."

He admits he thought the country would be easier to stabilise after the invasion, but argues that the difficulty in bringing peace is a bad reason to pull out.

And he thinks the overall situation in Iraq is better than what the media shows.

"The rest of the country is more stable than the Sunni triangle. Popular coverage is playing to the biases of the people. If we had the same level of coverage of World War II, we never would have gotten past North Africa."

He worries that dissatisfaction with the war will produce a Democratic president in 2008 - who, he says, will be a "Chamberlain", a reference to the British prime minister remembered for appeasing Hitler in the 1930s.

"They won't have my vote," Mr Sitler says of whoever that Democrat will be.