FILE - In this Saturday, Sept. 10, 2011 file
photo, President Barack Obama looks out over
graves in Section 60 at Arlington National
Cemetery in Arlington, Va., where he paid
his respects to those who have made the
ultimate sacrifice in the past decade. It
was once President Barack Obama's "war of
necessity." Now, it's America's forgotten
war. The Afghan conflict generates barely a
whisper on the U.S. presidential campaign
trail. It's not a hot topic at the office
water cooler or in the halls of Congress _
even though 88,000 American troops are still
fighting here and dying at a rate of one a
day.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
KABUL, Afghanistan
(AP) — It was once President Barack Obama's
"war of necessity." Now, it's America's
forgotten war.
The Afghan conflict generates barely a
whisper on the U.S. presidential campaign
trail. It's not a hot topic at the office
water cooler or in the halls of Congress —
even though more than 80,000 American troops
are still fighting here and dying at a rate
of one a day.
Americans show more interest in the economy
and taxes than the latest suicide bombings
in a different, distant land. They're more
tuned in to the political ad war playing out
on television than the deadly fight still
raging against the Taliban. Earlier this
month, protesters at the Iowa State Fair
chanted "Stop the war!" They were referring
to one purportedly being waged against the
middle class.
By the time voters go to the polls Nov. 6 to
choose between Obama and presumptive
Republican nominee Mitt Romney, the war will
be in its 12th year. For most Americans,
that's long enough.
Public opinion remains largely negative
toward the war, with 66 percent opposed to
it and just 27 percent in favor in a May
AP-GfK poll. More recently, a Quinnipiac
University poll found that 60 percent of
registered voters felt the U.S. should no
longer be involved in Afghanistan. Just 31
percent said the U.S. is doing the right
thing by fighting there now.
Not since the Korean War of the early 1950s
— a much shorter but more intense fight —
has an armed conflict involving America's
sons and daughters captured so little public
attention.
"We're bored with it," said Matthew Farwell,
who served in the U.S. Army for five years
including 16 months in eastern Afghanistan,
where he sometimes received letters from
grade school students addressed to the brave
Marines in Iraq — the wrong war.
"We all laugh about how no one really
cares," he said. "All the 'support the
troops' stuff is bumper sticker deep."
Farwell, 29, who is now studying at the
University of Virginia, said the war is
rarely a topic of conversation on campus —
and he isn't surprised that it's not
discussed much on the campaign trail.
"No one understands how to extricate
ourselves from the mess we have made there,"
he said. "So from a purely political point
of view, I wouldn't be talking about it if I
were Barack Obama or Mitt Romney either."
Ignoring the Afghan war, though, doesn't
make it go away.
More than 1,950 Americans have died in
Afghanistan and thousands more have been
wounded since President George W. Bush
launched attacks on Oct. 7, 2001 to rout
al-Qaida after it used Afghanistan to train
recruits and plot the Sept. 11 attacks that
killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
The war drags on even though al-Qaida has
been largely driven out of Afghanistan and
its charismatic leader Osama bin Laden is
dead — slain in a U.S. raid on his Pakistani
hideout last year.
Strangely, Afghanistan never seemed to grab
the same degree of public and media
attention as the war in Iraq, which Obama
opposed as a "war of choice."
Unlike Iraq, victory in Afghanistan seemed
to come quickly. Kabul fell within weeks of
the U.S. invasion in October 2001. The
hardline Taliban regime was toppled with few
U.S. casualties.
But the Bush administration's shift toward
war with Iraq left the Western powers
without enough resources on the ground, so
by 2006 the Taliban had regrouped into a
serious military threat.
Candidate Obama promised to refocus
America's resources on Afghanistan. But by
the time President Obama sent 33,000 more
troops to Afghanistan in December 2009,
years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan had
drained Western resources and sapped resolve
to build a viable Afghan state.
And over time, his administration has grown
weary of trying to tackle Afghanistan's
seemingly intractable problems of poverty
and corruption. The American people have
grown weary too.
While most Americans are sympathetic to the
plight of the Afghan people, they have
become deeply skeptical of President Hamid
Karzai's willingness to tackle corruption
and political patronage and the coalition's
chances of "budging a medieval society" into
the modern world, says Ann Marlowe, a
visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, a
policy research organization in Washington.
"With millions of veterans home and talking
with their families and friends ... some
knowledge of just how hard this is has
percolated down," said Marlowe, who has
traveled to Afghanistan many times.
It has also been hard to show progress on
the battlefield.
World War II had its Normandy, Vietnam its
Tet Offensive and Iraq its Battle of
Fallujah. Afghanistan is a grinding slough
in villages and remote valleys where success
is measured in increments.
The Afghan war transformed into a series of
small, often vicious and intense fights
scattered across a country almost as large
as Texas.
In July, 40 U.S. service members died in
Afghanistan in the deadliest month for
American troops so far this year. At least
31 have been killed this month — seven when
a helicopter crashed during a firefight with
insurgents in what was one of the deadliest
air disasters of the war. Ten others were
gunned down in attacks from members of the
Afghan security forces — either disgruntled
turncoats or Taliban infiltrators.
Many argue that bin Laden's death justifies
a quick U.S. exit from Afghanistan. Others
say it's important to stay longer to shore
up the Afghan security forces and help build
the government so that it can stand on its
own. An unstable Afghanistan could again
offer sanctuary to militants like al-Qaida
who want to harm American and its allies,
they say.
"Those of us who have been at this for a
long time continue to think that it's
important, and that we have a chance now of
a path forward with a long-term perspective
that will produce the results," said James
Cunningham, the new U.S. ambassador to
Afghanistan.
The U.S.-led coalition's combat mission will
wind down in the next few years, leading up
to the end of 2014 when most international
troops will have left or moved into support
roles.
Military analysts say the U.S. envisions a
post-2014 force of perhaps 20,000 to hunt
terrorists, train the Afghan forces and keep
an eye on neighboring Iran and other
regional powerhouse nations.
Americans aren't likely to know the number
until later this year. But will anyone other
than families of service personnel take
note?
"I have heard others say that the danger
that their spouses or children are serving
in is just simply not being cared about,"
said Fred Wellman, a 22-year Army veteran
who did three tours in Iraq. "I think a lot
of veterans feel it is just forgotten."
Political satirist Garry Trudeau captured
the apathy about the war in a comic strip
this year showing a U.S. servicewoman
stationed in Afghanistan calling her brother
back home.
After he complains that his children have
the flu and how he's struggling to keep up
with their hectic hockey schedule, he asks
her where she's calling from. She tells him
she's in Afghanistan.
"Oh, right, right ..." her brother replies.
"Wait, we're still there?"
___
Associated Press Writers Kristin Hall in
Nashville, Tennessee and Jennifer Agiesta in
Washington contributed to this report.
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2012 Associated Press. All rights
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