Americans Think The War In Afghanistan Is A Failure

When George Bush invaded Afghanistan over 13 years ago, we were told that the mission was to destroy the ability of al-Queda (and other terrorists) to use that country as a base for their operations. With that in mind, has the Afghan War been a success? Have we accomplished what we set out to do?

In a word, NO. We have spent untold sums of money, and it has cost us the lives of thousands of American soldiers (not to mention many more innocent civilians), and the best we can say is that we have a tentative control over part of that country (which will probably shrink as we withdraw more troops). The mission, as stated, is an abject failure.

And the American people know that. The chart above was made from a recent Rasmussen Poll -- done on December 29th and 30th of a random national sample of 1,000 likely voters, with a margin of error of 3 points. Note that nearly two-thirds of the public (64%) says we did not accomplish our mission in Afghanistan, while only a fraction (15%) thinks we did.

We are now in the 14th year of that war, and while we are removing some troops, we are leaving troops there also. Does anyone really think leaving those troops in Afghanistan will accomplish anything except to keep them in danger? It's certainly not going to allow us to fulfill our failed mission.

It's time to get our troops out of Afghanistan -- not some of them, and not most of them, but ALL of them.