Most of Americans against intervention: Poll

WASHINGTON

The American public strongly opposes a U.S. military intervention in Syria, despite a majority believing that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime gassed its own people, a poll showed yesterday.

Almost six in 10 of the 1,022 adults questioned, 59 percent, said Congress should not pass a resolution authorizing even limited military action against Syria, a CNN/ORC International poll found. More than seven in 10 said any such strike would not achieve significant U.S. goals or serve U.S. national interests.

 And even if Congress authorizes military action against Syria, a 55-percent majority would still oppose air strikes against Syrian military targets. Without congressional support, the opponents increased to 71 percent of respondents.

However, most of those questioned, 57 percent, said their representative’s vote in Congress would not make a difference in how they voted in upcoming 2014 mid-term elections. The mid-term polls are usually dominated by domestic issues.

The CNN poll had a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. A separate poll of lawmakers by USA Today found that Obama faces a daunting task on Capitol Hill. Only a small fraction of the 533 U.S. lawmakers, just 22 senators and 22 representatives, said they will support the use of military force against the al-Assad regime.

Overall, 19 senators and 130 members of the House of Representatives said they will oppose a resolution authorizing military action. But a broad majority of lawmakers in both houses of Congress said they remained undecided.

Even among Obama’s fellow Democrats, lawmakers said they were as likely to vote for as against the measure supporting military action, with 28 voicing support and 28 saying they are against such a resolution.