Politics & Power Quote by Marty Meehan

A number like "forty-five percent" lands with the cold force of a ledger entry, and that’s the point. Marty Meehan isn’t inviting you to debate Iraqi morality; he’s using a poll statistic as an indictment of a war’s political and strategic aftermath. The phrasing welds ethics to insurgency: not just that attacks happen, but that nearly half the population allegedly grants them moral permission. It reframes American troops from liberators or peacekeepers into perceived occupiers, and it does so without overtly saying so. The number does the dirty work.

The intent is diagnostic and prosecutorial at once. For a U.S. politician speaking during the Iraq War era, citing Iraqi approval for violence against Americans functions as a pressure point on audiences back home: whatever the stated mission, the on-the-ground perception has curdled into legitimized resistance. “Morally okay” is the key turn of the knife. It suggests the conflict has moved beyond security failure into moral failure, where American presence is generating not compliance but consent for retaliation.

The subtext also shields the speaker. A statistic offers plausible neutrality, an aura of facticity that lets a critic appear sober rather than ideological. Yet it’s a carefully chosen fact: it implies the war has eroded U.S. standing so dramatically that hostility is mainstream, not fringe. It also hints at an uncomfortable mirror for Americans: if a foreign army patrolled your streets, what percentage would call attacking it “morally okay”?