by Maisie Allison
A majority of Republicans now accept that the war has not been worth it:
Public support for the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low, with only 30 percent of respondents saying it has been worth fighting. Since the 2001 invasion, almost 2,000 U.S. troops have been killed and more than 15,000 have been wounded in Afghanistan. According to the poll, two-thirds of Americans think the war has not been worth fighting, equaling the most negative public assessments of the U.S. war effort in Iraq.
One wonders, as Marc Thiessen surely does, if the presumptive GOP nominee will eventually recalibrate along the lines of last summer's slip (seen above), or if he really does intend to double down on the "no apology" bit. More on the Romney campaign's "hawkish yet murky" foreign policy here. Amy Davidson reflects on the case of the anti-war Republicans:
Most wars are long wars, if you count the hurt they cause later. The new poll results suggest that the public may have a better sense of this than the leadership of either party. Mitt Romney has suggested that Obama isn’t doing enough to win, and needs to heed his generals more. Obama, meanwhile, may have listened to his generals a little too much for some of his supporters: before the withdrawal now planned, he sharply increased the number of troops. Will they both be at war with an electorate that wishes we weren’t in Afghanistan at all?
The Dish 