or some years America’s seemingly indefinite involvement in conflicts around the world – especially in Afghanistan and Iraq – has met with increasing disillusion among the US public, with consistent majorities in favour of getting out.
Politicians such as Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who all advocated disengagement and bringing the troops home, were the ones who won elections.
The trend has been increasingly isolationist and anti-globalist. It was one reason why Trump enjoyed fanatical support in some quarters. With mid-term elections coming up next year, and a feeble grip on Congress, it seems sensible for Joe Biden to align himself with this ‘America First’ attitude, and shift America away from being the world’s cop.
Now that the pullout from Afghanistan has actually happened, however, the scenes of chaos and talk of humiliation and retreat have rebounded badly on the US president. It seems Americans wanted a withdrawal – but not the withdrawal that actually happened.
The popularity of the war in Afghanistan has been in more or less continual decline since it began. After the traumas of 9/11, around 90pc of the public backed George W Bush’s policy of military action, which happened to be sanctioned by the UN and Nato.
No matter that he had only recently been elected on a platform that stressed domestic priorities over foreign adventure, America had to defend itself – and hit back. The cause was just, the methods seemed right, and the support was overwhelming.
But it was not to last. The additional financial and military commitment to Iraq dragged on, and the twin wars felt like overreach.
Fatigue set in. Even the assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2010 failed to boost support – and to some it felt like the original remit had finally been met.
By the time Trump signed his treaty with the Taliban, and a year later when Biden announced the withdrawal date, the conflict was overwhelmingly unpopular. Ending it was a democratic imperative.
About 70pc of Americans wanted it over – though of course much of that that would depend on how the question was posed: mention of terror would push sentiment towards continuing to maintain military bases in the region.
Democrats and more importantly swing voters tended to be keener on exiting Afghanistan than Republicans, but all showed majority support for withdrawal. Hence Biden’s determination to see it through.
But it has not looked orderly; it has not been on the president’s stated timetable; it has to some felt like a defeat and a betrayal; and it has alienated America’s allies.
This has meant that any positive political advantage from repatriating the last Americans on the symbolic date of September 11 has been obliterated by news footage of desperate Afghans clinging to rescue aircraft.
Americans do not generally thank leaders who make their country look weak. And so it has come to pass.
A majority of Americans – 69pc – disapprove of Biden’s handling of military operations, against 23pc approving of them.
Only 40pc of Democrats back Joe Biden on this, with 48pc of his own party rejecting his policy – at least according to a new poll by the Trafalgar Group.
In due course, and by the time the November 2022 elections come around, the voters might be more willing to give Biden the credit for “ending the war” (though the height of the fighting was years ago).
But for now Biden seems to have alienated both the most liberal supporters in his party, and the many moderate-minded sections of the US electorate.
There is not much he can do about it now, which may explain why he is being so defiant in his public remarks, doubling down in the hope that people might all the same see him as a strong leader.
It may all be in vain.