What Americans Think About Ending The War In Afghanistan l FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast, the crew assesses public opinion on the war in Afghanistan and the Biden Administration’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops as the crisis in the region escalates. They also discuss the new district-level 2020 Census results released last week and how these trends will set the stage for redistricting debates.
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[@pakkmann]

Every President since W. Bush has been kicking this down the road. No one wanted to be the end guy, even though this result was well known from day 1. Biden will take a hit here but probably temporary, but honestly the big loser is W. Bush... this is the ending of the failure of the 9/11 response.

[@frbe0101]

I always wonder had we not done Iraq and focused on Afghanistan (and Pakistan) if we could have won?

[@pakkmann]

@@frbe0101 good question. Depends on the specific "goals" that we set. We shall never know...

[@frbe0101]

@@pakkmann A stable democracy not a totalitarian theocracy?

[@RobertEWaters]

You would have given bin Laden safe haven? Because that's what you're saying.

[@pakkmann]

@@RobertEWaters I suppose that comment was to my original post? To be clear, the 9/11 response ended up being not just a military action, but eventually a quasi-permanent residence. I would say that at the outset, that was probably not what the powers that be were assuming would be the situation. Once in, each President didn't want to be the one to remove the troops even though public opinion showed people wanted out. Ultimately I'm not talking about the merits of the 9/11 response, I'm talking about the political quagmire that it became. The response would be the same for Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, the next pres, the one after that, etc.

[@edoardocattaneo4279]

Comparing the US presence in Japan to that in Afghanistan seems like a big leap to me

[@MeGawOOt99]

Yeah going from people from Japan who made their own carrier planes and carriers to a bunch of goat herders with AK-47 is stretch that using the same foreign policy would get the same result.

[@mangalores-x_x]

It is a crap comparison. The former British minister of development Rory Stewart however pointed out that there was no real pressure to do this. The West could have kept 2000-5000 troops there indefinitely to back up the Afghan forces who did the majority of the fighting since 2014. It is not even like there were many fatalities among coalition troops because they mainly helped the Afghan forces keep their gear working. The main death nail for the Afghan army was that Trump signed the deal to withdraw without any concessions by the Taliban. The Taliban not being stupid then demanded: Civilian contractors, too. And that was the more essential part in keeping e.g. the Afghan airforce and logistics running. That screwed their moral and local priorities who then decided the Afghan government is a write off when even the US president signs such a crappy deal. And beyond that the West and the US did alot more wrong, the nationa building of Afghanistan was usually just an afterthrought so even the claim this is 20 years is wrong. The US went away to Iraq for most of that time.

[@edoardocattaneo4279]

@@mangalores-x_x yh I agree fully. An interesting comparison, especially when it comes to nation building, is with Soviet supported regime of the 80s and early 90s. When they left they had trained thousands of technicians to help with the maintenance of the heavy equipment they had left them

[@nicebluejay]

it was doomed from the beginning. it's just sad on so many levels.

[@1970sau]

It didn't have to be this bad they could have took their time and moved civilians the equipment and in the soldiers last but instead like everything else Joe Biden takes a hammer to everything

[@1970sau]

@@christinalaw3375 it's almost like the Afghani people have no sense of country so nothing to fight for they allow people to rule them I feel that's happening in America taking away our sense of national pride because if you don't care about your country you won't fight for it or its freedom

[@nomadpurple6154]

Why should UN countries solve a USA-ally created problem? The USA & it's allies should take those they have exposed to danger. What makes you think that taliban aren't Afghani?That's like saying Republicans aren't American, just because you don't agree with their belief system.

[@ahamed4152]

most people's issue is not evacuating before getting the troops out. Now is sending them back to get people out.

[@autostuff8971]

Anyone who thinks people leaving rural areas and moving to cities is a boon for Democrats needs to be reminded that no matter how rural and desolate a state becomes it still gets two senators. And the lower the population the more power per voter the state gets in the House. There's a reason Dems have been consistently more popular nationally for about thirty years now but always struggle to win the House and Senate.

[@autostuff8971]

If Dems really want to consistently hold the House and Senate they need to convince their people to move to rural states, because concentrating in big cities (and subsequently, states that have big cities) weakens their power.

[@mryan89]

Indeed, well said

[@RobotWrangler]

They had 20 years and billions in help to build a minimal military and nothing was built. Instead everyone lined their pockets. From the politicians grafting, to the officers faking duty rolls to the guys selling their uniforms and equipment. "Me first, country last" killed Afghanistan. That is a lesson for the US.

[@JG-kl5tt]

Yeah let’s ignore the freedoms that women and minorities gained. They’re worth NOTHING clearly. 😒

[@RobotWrangler]

@@JG-kl5tt Building something you can't hold is building on shifting sand. I would have loved to see all female military forces developed and deployed to defend Afghanistan. Women had the most to lose and probably the least to gain from corruption. Didn't happen. I would have loved to see the units that weren't corrupt expanded and placed in charge. Didn't happen. What did happen? Lots of men got as much as they could and lied to the Americans for great profit. US companies not excepted. A full generation of potential development lost. A full generation of cultural development thrown away.

[@morten4383]

View from Norway: USA and NATO have been in Afghanistan in 20 years. I think the speed of which the democratic government and security forces fell apart shows that to redraw from Afghanistan was the right decision. If the redraw had led to 10 years of civil war and finally a Taliban take-over one could criticize that USA/NATO did not support the democratic forces more. We have spent 20 years in Afghanistan trying to establish a sustainable democratic society, and without american military it collapsed in weeks. It shows that to establish such a society in Afghanistan is impossible. The only alternative to redraw would be to stay there forever....

[@ChrisCapoccia]

but "leave a few troops behind" were based on this fantasy that Afghanis actually supported the government America was creating. Clearly things collapsed so quickly that there can be no other conclusion that American instituted government had insignificant support and largely people in power were happy to cede power to the Taliban. We might not like it, we might want our style of government imposed on Afghans, but it's a lost cause

[@mangalores-x_x]

Or the last US president signed a conditional surrender on the concession of betraying the Afghan government that told every Afghan local leader that they need to also make a surrender deal to have a chance of survival because the US just fucked the Afghan army, policy and government in one fell swoop for no concessions by the Taliban other than not shooting at US troops which they largely weren't doing anyway. I find this narrative vile. The US and the West did do stuff to fuck the Afghan people thoroughly and now act that they wanted it that way. No, they are just not stupid enough to get themselves killed. There is a reason the Taliban shot every Afghan special forces soldier they got their hands on and left anyone who disarmed to run home. They aren't stupid either, not as stupid as the last US president anyway.

[@1970sau]

If it's a war we just lost it was more like an occupation while the terrorist was waiting for us to leave they would have waited a thousand years if they had to

[@tylerhackner9731]

I support ending it

[@jahanhashemi3291]

One thing that has a significant impact to the 2020 data: In 2018, the Trump administration rescinded the Census Bureau's 2015 commit to add "Middle Eastern" and "North African" to its race and ethnicity questions. This affects roughly 2% of the US population that are otherwise only categorized as White.

[@stephenbeck8209]

Census discussion begins at 29:50 (if you want to skip over the war talk).

[@arturovasquez5510]

Thanks g

[@lvvv812]

WE SHOULD NEVER STOP THAT WAR.WE ARE THERE TO PROTECT US.NOT AFGHANISTAN.

[@quynguyen36]

All evacuations would happen like that, a little more better or a little more worse maybe. Still early to judge. Just wait for a few weeks to count the casualties, the saved, the loss then decide if it is successful, normal, or worst.

[@dlmcnamara]

Exactly. We have ask ourselves what would “US success” look like when thw Taliban captured of the Capitol?

[@JosephHutzulak]

@@dlmcnamara Up to 40k Americans still trapped in Afghanistan with no real way to evacuate them due to the compromised Airport, unknown ammounts of war materiel captured by the Taleban. This is worse then Saigon or Teheran.

[@RobertEWaters]

The casualties in twenty years were less than 3,000 Americans, and no American has died in Afghanistan for over a year. We could absolutely have withdrawn gradually over time despite the tiny number of Americans there in the first place and at least softened the blow. We could also have prevented the blow to the morale of the Afghan army's morale involved in just running out on them.

[@dlmcnamara]

@@JosephHutzulak Don't count your chickens before they're hatched. www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2021/08/17/nato-scrambles-to-complete-afghanistan-evacuations-as-soon-as-possible/ When an army loses, their equipment is captured. If you want to wind the clock back more than 15 years, to when we started arming the Afghans that's fine.

[@dlmcnamara]

@@RobertEWaters The timeline was set up more than a year ago; the Afghans had plenty of warning.

[@RobertEWaters]

Fewer Americans died in twenty years of war in Afghanistan than during our worst week of COVID. No American has died in that war for over a year. Americans were not even in combat operations. The government was hopeless, but a small residual force might well have prevented the tragedy we're seeing now. We left, not because we were paying too high a price, but because democracies cannot sustain the will to fight even a small war on the other side of the world unless people can see an immediate threat to the country's national security.

[@lalakuma9]

As a non-American, it surprised me that Americans mostly didn't talk about what would happen to Afghanistan when they decided to withdraw their troops. They only talked about taking their own soldiers back home, not of the educated women on Taliban's hit list that would be executed once the Americans leave.

[@chbuki]

I think the reason that discussion doesn't factor in here is because that justification to stay demands that we stay there indefinitely. How would staying have fixed any of that? It wouldn't. Afghani women's position in Afghan society cannot be maintained with US military presence.

[@lvvv812]

Who the hell cares about it shhh

[@goober7535]

It's not our country, our ideals are not compatible

[@nobodyexceptme7794]

About goddamn time. No more world police. Get your own act together before you try all that.

[@logananderson7881]

The UN needs to get its shit together. No one nation should police the world. The US has been filling a a vacuum.

[@saurabhmehta111]

Definitely the American troops have been there for a very very long time. But if the decision was for withrawal The President should have done it step by step. But unfortunately the Afghanistan President fled without fighting, it was his nation.

[@rmcdaniel2424]

No.. If you tell your enemy what your doing.. Thats a huge target. There was no way to do it. Thats why Trump never did it

[@evandavid9087]

@@rmcdaniel2424 I think Trump never said what he was doing because he didn’t actually know what he was doing

[@dlmcnamara]

@@rmcdaniel2424 nah, Trump was just smart enough to make sure the final straws fell when he was out of office.

[@danieljensen329]

From everything I've seen and read, the Biden administration believed there was a risk of the Taliban breaking the ceasefire with US forces if the US didn't clearly signal it was committed to getting out of the country. If you believe that logic, a step-by-step withdrawal could have provoked the Taliban, leading to a situation in which the US either withdrew under daily headlines about suicide bombings or significantly escalated the conflict. You can agree with that logic or not, but virtually any way the situation develops can be spun to support the Biden position. If there are attacks on US troops, they'll say "See, the Taliban was never going to respect the ceasefire, so we needed to withdraw as fast as possible." If the Taliban respects the ceasefire, they'll say "Look, we saved American lives by making a quick withdrawal." A better question is, if a quick withdrawal was necessary, why did they believe the Afghan president and wait to evacuate SIVs/diplomats/allies? Another might be, if Biden wants to reassure allies of American leadership, why did he decide to go it alone instead of getting NATO to sign off on his plan? Unfortunately, those aren't questions that are likely to matter much to the vast majority of voters, which is probably why Biden chose a strategy that dealt with the withdrawal well before the 2022 midterms.

[@johnfranklin6394]

@@evandavid9087 Trump committed to the Taliban to withdraw US troops by May 2021. Trump lost the election, so Biden moved the date to September 11 2021 for obvious political reasons. Both dates would have ended with the result we are seeing. www.newsweek.com/who-ordered-withdrawal-afghanistan-when-most-us-troops-leave-joe-biden-donald-trump-barack-obama-1619599

[@andybrodski]

It's always a Red vs. Blue which neither party is Conservative or Liberal and Americans have such a Victim mentality. If you are looking for someone to blame then just look in a Mirror.

[@captivatethem]

I told somebody about this podcast and now they have custody of my kids. 10/10 highly recommend.

[@Vanalovan]

I think race and ethnicity needs to be clearly divided with race being divided into the categories most people are familiar with like “black, white, Asian, etc.” and ethnicity expanded to include or just left open for people to fill in to see if overlapping with race they see themselves primarily as European American, Indian American, Arab American or even more specifically sometimes as Punjabi, Italian-American, or Egyptian-American. The idea that the census treats the only ethnicities as Hispanic or non-Hispanic just doesn’t seem to fit with how anyone else talks about ethnicity

[@kkalafus]

I wish the polls didn't ask for opinions about withdrawal from Afghanistan. I don't feel qualified to have an opinion and I think the majority of Americans are in the same boat. Ask me if I trust President Biden to gather all the facts and do what he believes is best for America (I do, 100%).

[@geraldmeehan8942]

Intelligence failures was underestimating the corruption of the Afghan government and military. How do you have air superiority and fold like a wet rag ? Obviously the military was 3/4ths Taliban. As far as keeping troops there permanently, You can't keep troops in a country where the majority of the population wants you out

[@johnfranklin6394]

If the Afghan army was not 3/4ths Taliban, it was likely 3/4ths ghost soldiers. This report cites a reduction in the previous Afghan army headcount of 42,000 after ghost soldiers were eliminated. This is the practice where senior Afghan army commanders were able to get US-paid salaries while having no real soldiers under their command. Just made up lists of ghost soldiers. www.military.com/daily-news/2019/08/02/afghanistan-loses-42000-troops-crackdown-ghost-soldiers.html

[@RobertEWaters]

The intelligence failure was in failing to understand what happens to morale when a friend who is your only hope abandons you. And the majority of the population didn't want us out. They lived through the Taliban nightmare once before.

[@geraldmeehan8942]

@@RobertEWaters So Afghan government wasn't worth fighting for then? They had air superiority and folded like a wet rag

[@superstormthunder3]

One poll I saw had 70% of Americans before this week wanted to pull out of Afghanistan. Plus I think Biden did the right decision, yes I think the withdrawal could have been better bit I don’t think it will hurt Biden politically as much as say inflation (even tho it’s not really his fault)

[@evandavid9087]

I gotta agree. His approval might go down, but there’s really no Republican attack other than to say we should have stayed, which as you rightly say is very unpopular.

[@CosmicCosmo1]

Why backpedal. The fact that fascists retook the country in 1 day is proof that we should have never bothered occupying the country.

[@zch7491]

They don’t care ... sadly... but on the same day some of this bad Afghanistan news was coming out, I got my child tax credit payment, now there’s something voters might care about

[@RingxWorld]

Why should they? Yes its sad that the Taliban took over, but the choices are either to stay there forever or rely on the Afghan government to give a shit and actually fight. If we proped up that government for another 100 years it would still fall within a week after leaving

[@ajmarecki]

I’m American and I care. However there wasn’t anything to do to prevent the Taliban from taking over. We couldn’t stay there forever. And the Afghan government military was weak and corrupt.

[@victormonjaras2134]

You can gerrymander districts. Gerrymandering a state is not really possible though in terms of gerrymandering a state in electoral college is possible if state legislate passes law that would reward the electoral college votes to selection of the lawmakers and not by the party that won the state. And yeah it stinks about Afghanistan but it’s gonna suck that people in this country will forget about it since it doesn’t affect them directly unless something or someone close by them is affected by them.

[@Ratchet4647]

Personally vehemently against the merging of the race and ethnicity questions. Hispanic isn't my race, it's my ethnicity or cultural heritage. I hate when demographics surveys merge the 2, always have. I can see how this might confuse hispanic people who aren't distinctly black or white, as in some latin American countries people like that might not consider their race very heavily. Also, I can see some immigrants confusing the race question as they might perceive them to be asking if they're Anglo or African American when they've already explained they're hispanic. But Hispanic is definitely not a race. Hispanic people are many races.

[@unvexis]

Okay, so, the speed with which the government failed is irrelevant. We knew it wouldn't last. Laying blame for not communicating that the fall would be immediate accomplishes nothing. The whole topic is pointless.

[@emanuelzbeda1420]

I wanted a Middle Eastern North African option (MENA) and I was really disappointed when it wasn’t there

[@fluxypoo]

We should have left after we got bin laden.

[@theEvilLord90]

Glad he got out. What other way we could have gotten out of the country and not pay for the continuing consequences. America has spent more than enough money and blood on this war and glad this is over.

[@horus2780]

How anyone can approve of the way Biden handled the withdrawal is beyond me, regardless of whether you think we should have left or not.

[@user-ro9md9wp3j]

*is handling

[@Noschool100]

Idk if I'd say id approve but it seems more like this was inevitable regardless of what we did. The afghan military clearly can't fill the power vacuum the US is leaving so the taliban was gonna take over regardless of what we did as long as our plan was to leave. We can't both leave and also prevent the taliban from grabbing power.

[@evandavid9087]

@@Noschool100 I have to agree with you. I think we can give Biden credit/blame for the smaller details but at the end of the day it was up to the Afghans to hold their country and even after 20 years of training they couldn’t.

[@danieljensen329]

For 95+% of the population, it's pretty easy to understand why they will ultimately end up approving or disapproving of the way Biden handled the withdrawal--it will have nothing to do with any specific policy decision itself and everything to do with their partisan camp.

[@aiaek]

Second

[@pikachuthegayatheist6215]

I think this is something that fits more along party lines, in fact Republicans don't want to leave Afghanistan, while the Democrats like it's these wars are not necessary, mainly the idea of having a large military is something not Democrats always support, but Republicans push for and reasons for invading other countries based on racial ideas of what they believe terrorists are. And it's that factor that Republicans are trying to use to defeat the Democrats politically, however, you're not going to see much change politically as far as voters. The Republican party has gone so far against the progression society that there is no way that new voters are going vote GOP, unless the GOP starts moving towards left-wing of political beliefs, other than this I think things are set in stone which means there's not going to be much change at all in Congress, or in the present. In fact the data has shown because of how far right the Republican party is gone that even states that haven't voted Democrat in 50 years are likely to vote Democrat because of the older voters dying and the younger voters taking over, and many younger voters tend to lean more left than most Democrats. Big problem is that with about Trump not being an office is that politics is not as popular amongst liberals as is amongst the hard-left, which this means that Liberals are only active when a republican is in office. In addition to this the Taliban is not as much a threat as actual white nationalist. The whole idea that the Taliban is a threat to the United States is something Republicans used to avoid talking about a Christian right-wing a domestic terrorist organizations within the United States they actually are a threat to the US National Security, as to where the Taliban is only a threat to Royal Dutch Shell and these oil companies and speculate on oil that specifically goes to foreign countries is it means to raise oil prices here in the United States when the US oil is domestic, and has no relation to foreign oil meaning the US barely Imports any of its oil. Which basically means any effects on foreign oil has no effect on US oil outside of I want to raise prices just because I'm a piece of crap and I have more shareholders.

[@dizzolve]

It's easy to blame Biden. And I'm no Biden lover but ........... at least he had the balls to do the right thing. He had to know this was risky.

[@Noschool100]

Ya, Afghanistan has been a bandaid that was gonna be painful to rip off for years and we just kept postponing it.

[@joshuaghozeil8061]

Q: how much of this is BC ppl died from a plague

[@RobertEWaters]

Just watch Republicans try to re-write the history of Trump's involvement here. He and Biden both deserve the blame.

[@haneytr3s]

We haven't left Germany, Japan, or Korea why did we need to leave Afghanistan. America benefits when the world is at peace.

[@rubaiyat300]

I would say because the local populations are generally in favor of the US being there in those countries, are useful allies in other arenas (they also send troops, material support, or money to other fights the US is and has been in), are functioning societies outside of US involvement, and don't have actual combat zones in their territories US soldiers have to navigate.

[@haneytr3s]

@@rubaiyat300 was that the case in 1946 and 1953.

[@scottadkins7322]

Oh my God....these generation X'er's or Millennials don't have a clue about what's happening on the ground in Afghanistan, why it's happening, and what that means for the country....UFB.

[@scottadkins7322]

Do we have a moral obligation to help Afghans who helped us for 20 years? Of course we do, unless we want to see the Taliban using their severed heads for soccer balls.

[@jackdelehanty]

First!

[@lizslezak1646]

you can’t gerrymander a state lol