President Obama recently explained his plan to drawdown the war in Afghanistan, while maintaining a smaller contingent of American advisors in the country for a decade to come.
Today, Chris Matthews hosted msnbc contributor Wes Moore and Politico's Glenn Thrush to talk about both the politics and policy of ending the war in Afghanistan. "Politically, will there be this sense of exhilaration or completion?" asked Matthews to Thrush. "We went in with a Pearl Harbor attitude, and we're leaving with a sort of Vietnam attitude," explained Thrush, noting that Americans are drawing away from the war. "There just doesn't seem to be any appetite for people to even pay attention this [war.]"
"Militarily, we've accomplished what we can accomplish militarily," explained Moore of the rationale for drawing down the war. "The future of Afghanistan is going to be a political future of Afghanistan that's determined by the Afghan government and Afghan people...that's not something that adding on fifteen brigades will ever accomplish."
Earlier this month, an AP-GfK poll found that support for the war hit record lows, with only 27 percent of Americans saying they back it. In fact, a March USA Today/Gallup poll found that half of Americans support a faster drawdown than the one Obama has sketched out. With billions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, the war has become, if anything, a political loser.