Quagmire? Nine years on, Americans grow weary of war in Afghanistan

Deep down, most Americans know something is rotten about Afghanistan. In a land where narcotics was banned prior to our invasion, Afghanistan has the global opium market cornered and is the number one exporter of marijuana and hashish. Bin Laden is obviously dead, we haven't heard or seen from al Zawahiri, and the Taliban are not international terrorists. Not to mention it has to at least be in the back of Americans' minds, how, with all the hundreds of billions of their tax dollars funding far and away the most powerful, high tech military force in the history of the world, they still can't defeat a bunch of goat herders and cavemen.

Of course, if we'd stop funding them and supplying them with our own weapons, this might be easier to achieve.

Americans approve of Gen. David Petraeus as the new US commander in Afghanistan. But after nine years and with mounting US casualties, support for the war itself is waning

CS Monitor -

Until recently, the nine-year conflict in Afghanistan had become “the forgotten war” for many Americans – a complaint increasingly heard among US troops there.

But this week’s sacking of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as US commander puts Afghanistan – and especially how the fight against the Taliban is going – squarely back into public thought and concern.

Most Americans agree with Obama that McChrystal had to go, polls show. But they’re far less supportive of the conflict itself, weary of what’s become the longest war in US history.

A recent Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters finds that just 41 percent “now believe it is possible for the United States to win the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.” More to the point, a plurality of 48 percent now say ending the war in Afghanistan is a more important goal than winning it.

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