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When the United States went to war there in 2001, the American public agreed almost unanimously with President George W. Bush’s decision. That November, still shaken by the attacks of Sept. 11, nine in 10 Americans said they thought sending troops into Afghanistan was the right thing to do, according to a Gallup poll.

Over the past 20 years, the public’s views on the United States’ presence in Afghanistan have shifted, but they haven’t totally flipped. The percentage of Americans saying it was a mistake to send troops to Afghanistan ticked up steadily in the 2000s, but plateaued in the mid-40s, where it remained in 2019, the last time Gallup asked the question.

That differs significantly from the country’s feelings about the war in Iraq: By 2007, 62 percent of Americans said sending troops there had been a mistake, according to Gallup. That number has not fallen below 50 percent since then. Similarly, by the time American troops headed home from Vietnam in the mid-1970s, six in 10 Americans were telling Gallup pollsters that the war there hadn’t been worthwhile.

No such public outcry emerged around Afghanistan. Shortly after President Donald Trump announced his intention in 2019 to bring home most of the American troops stationed there, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that just one in three Americans thought the United States “should have a rapid and orderly withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan.” Fifty-eight percent opposed it.

Still, the issue has a relatively low salience for voters, as the number of U.S. casualties has remained low and the war has garnered scant attention in the American press — even as the political instability in Afghanistan has grown only more severe in recent years.