Via Matt Yglesias, check out the staggering percentage of the public that believes Obama should indeed withdraw combat forces from Iraq in 16 months:

Americans are more upbeat about U.S. prospects in Iraq than at any time in the past five years, but nearly two-thirds continue to believe the war is not worth fighting and 70 percent say President-elect Barack Obama should fulfill his campaign promise to withdraw U.S. forces from the country within 16 months, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Look to your left. Look to your right. Look ahead. Two of every three people you see, plus a statistically-significant-but-frustrating-for-the-point-of-metaphor remainder, is an Islamofascist.

Meanwhile, there’s something also interesting in the poll from an academic perspective. Clearly people’s perceptions of Iraq track improved security. That’s as should be — security improves, people perceive improved security, so they report to pollsters that they perceive improved security. What doesn’t change is people’s positions on the normative questions: was Iraq a strategic mistake (yes) and should the U.S. withdraw expeditiously (yes). All that would lend credence to the proposition that there’s a tipping point in public opinion — yes, I hate that buzzword too, sorry — beyond which antipathy to a war coalesces and becomes immutable, regardless of the war’s fortunes.

Crossposted to The Streak.