My regular visitors will know that I am a staunch opponent of war…..after serving in Vietnam for 2 and half years I saw the obscenities of war close-up and personal…..once I returned to the US I became a hardcore anti-war activist and protester……but that is just me.

But it will be interesting just what do Americans think about war…..and the site fivethirtyeight.com took a great ;look at the question.

It’s hard to remember now that it’s over, but the war in Afghanistan was overwhelmingly popular when it began. 

Merely a week after Sept. 11, then-president George W. Bush signed a joint resolution from Congress authorizing the use of force against those responsible, and the U.S. and British, with international support, began bombing Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces Oct. 7. The American public almost universally approved this rush to war: A Gallup poll conducted soon after found that 90 percent supported the war and only 5 percent opposed it. 

The circumstances, of course, were very particular: There had been an attack on American soil. When Bush’s war on terror expanded to Iraq in 2003, more Americans questioned the reasoning behind going to war — skepticism that turned out to be justified — and there were high-profile protests against the Bush administration, but still an overwhelming majority supported the effort: About 76 percent approved and 20 percent disapproved, according to Gallup.

With time, though, both wars became less popular. A Pew Research Center survey conducted last August, after the U.S. had fully withdrawn from the country, found that a majority of Americans supported the decision to leave Afghanistan, even as a plurality thought the Biden administration had handled the withdrawal badly, while a July 2021 Gallup poll found that 47 percent of Americans thought the war had been a mistake. Many younger Americans had grown up entirely during the war’s 20-year duration and so hadn’t formed an opinion at the war’s inception, while many older Americans had changed their minds as its costs multiplied over time.

What Do Americans Think About War?

Almost daily we hear one pundit after another telling us all about the horrors that the people of Ukraine are suffering….but I do not remember there being that much concern for others that we had fought in the past and what it did to the civilian population.

To be honest there was reports scattered around the news cycle….but nothing like the 24 hours of constant visual theater.

Personally, to answer the question I do not feel that the American people really care about war…..as long as they can continue to go to Starbucks for $10 coffee all is well in the world.

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