When U.S. forces launched the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, they were riding a wave of anger and a call for justice by a broad swath of the American public.
Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, says the initial support for the Afghan invasion was around 90 percent, and the war was closely followed by a large number of people. But since then, the public has been slowly disengaging, he says.
In 2001 and 2002, about 40 percent of the public said they were following news about Afghanistan very closely. From 2009 to 2011, that number had fallen to 25 percent, Kohut says, adding that the pattern in Iraq was the same.
Kohut says he's not surprised by these numbers. The public is typically more engaged at the start of a military operation. But he says the support and interest in the Iraq War started to tumble within months after it began in March 2003.
"The public soured on the decision to go to war in Iraq by 2004, when not only were there no weapons of mass destruction found, but all of a sudden, the cost of that war began to increase, [and] casualties began to be rather substantial," he says.
Army Col. Matthew Moten, a professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, says it's unrealistic to sustain public interest on any issue year after year. Moten says the American public has obviously moved on from the two wars.
