Eroding Support for the War in Afghanistan

Both Here and Abroad

“I do not think the public will accept for much longer that our losses can be justified by simply referring to the risk of greater terrorism on our streets”

Eric Stuart Joyce, British Labour Party Parliament member, expressed the same sentiments as many conservatives here in the States concerning the war in Afghanistan. Joyce felt so strongly about the UK needing to pull out of Afghanistan he resigned.

Labour MP Eric Joyce said the UK could no longer justify the growing casualty toll in Afghanistan by saying the war would prevent terrorism back home.

The government should set a time limit on the deployment of troops, he added.

Gordon Brown said the Afghan mission was “vital” for fighting terrorism and nothing should distract from it.

via BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Aide quits over Afghan strategy.

This Wall Street Journal article addresses the growing number of  conservatives who are now questioning the reasoning for our continued involvement in what they see as an apparently hopeless situation. The Journal piece focuses on a recent George Will column, but even conservative talk show host Mike Savage, a strong supporter of the war in Iraq,  has questioned whether we should continue in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan Is Not ‘Obama’s War’

In his column for the Washington Post on Tuesday, the influential conservative George Will provided intellectual fodder for the campaign among some Republicans to hang the Afghanistan war around the Obama administration’s neck. Washington, he wrote, should “keep faith” with our fighting men and women by “rapidly reversing the trajectory of America’s involvement in Afghanistan.” “Obama’s war,” a locution one is now beginning to hear from other conservatives, is an expression of discontent that has been smoldering beneath the surface for several months.

The weakening public support for continuing the counterinsurgency campaign is not surprising. In the midst of an economic crisis people are tempted to draw inward. Add to that a general war weariness in the U.S. and the fact that the Afghanistan war is not going well right now—violence in Afghanistan is already far worse this year than last—and you have the makings of an unpopular conflict.

But the case of conservative opposition to the war in Afghanistan—as well as increasingly in Iraq—is symptomatic of something larger: the long history of political parties out of power advancing a neo-isolationist outlook. For example, Democrats were vocal opponents of President Reagan’s support for the Nicaraguan contras and the democratic government in El Salvador, the U.S. invasion of Grenada, the deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe, and the forceful stand against the Soviet Union generally.

via Dan Senor and Peter Wehner: Afghanistan Is Not ‘Obama’s War’ -- WSJ.com.

With concerns over our economic crisis, swelling political divisions, and internal social conflicts, people are tending to look inward and thus the eroding public support for the war in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates attempts to reiterate the importance of achieving our objectives in Afghanistan.