Introduction
As Americans witnessed U.S. forces leave Afghanistan in August 2021, foreign policy experts grappled with how yet another U.S. military withdrawal could end in a strategic failure. President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan concluded the second of the two largest post-9/11 wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. The wars cost the United States trillions of dollars and killed more than seven thousand U.S. service members and hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilians.
Foreign policy experts and pollsters have attempted to determine lessons learned from the wars, including how Americans could view future use of military force abroad. This article examines the views of African Americans, in particular. It illuminates their opinions on the use of military force in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as on whether the wars benefited the United States and their families.
A new online survey, conducted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in partnership with the data and analytics firm YouGov, revealed that respondents were split on the decision to invade Afghanistan, and a plurality believed it was the wrong decision to invade Iraq. On the other hand, for both wars, a majority believed it was the right decision to remove troops. Moreover, a majority believed the wars provided minimal benefits to the United States and their families.
This article is the second of a two-part series that contributes to Carnegie’s larger project on how African Americans experience U.S. foreign policy. The series attempts to extend the scholarship on African Americans and the U.S. military by engaging the question, “How do African Americans feel about U.S. military interventionism in the twenty-first century?”
Survey Design
Like the first article in the series, this article draws on a survey of 1,150 people of African descent residing in the United States. The survey includes individuals who identify as Black or African American, including those who are generationally African American (residence in the United States for multiple generations) and foreign-born people of African descent (for instance, continental Africans and Afro-Caribbean people). The survey was designed by scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and conducted by YouGov between September 8 and 13, 2022.
YouGov recruited respondents from its proprietary panel of nearly 2 million U.S. residents. Only respondents aged eighteen and above who are Black and reside in the United States were eligible to participate in the survey.
YouGov employs a sophisticated sample-matching procedure to ensure that the respondent pool, to the greatest extent possible, is representative of the African American community. All the analyses in this study employ sampling weights to ensure representativeness. The overall margin of error for the sample is +/- 3 percent. This margin of error is calculated at the 95 percent confidence interval.
The survey instrument contains a range of questions organized across two sections: opinion on sending and removing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and opinion on whether the wars benefited the United States and the respondents’ families.
Strengths and Limitations
One of the significant benefits of working with an extensive survey panel, such as the one maintained by YouGov, is that it provides access to large sample sizes that allow researchers to make reliable estimates about relatively small populations of interest. YouGov’s survey panel provides access to various demographics within the Black American community.
Online surveys have some drawbacks. The way in which a question is phrased plays a critical role in how respondents interpret the question and can influence their response. Careful attention has been placed to ensure that questions are worded in a simple manner in the hope that all respondents interpret the question in the same or similar ways. Even then, one cannot prevent various interpretations among respondents. And, it must be taken into consideration that respondents’ political knowledge will vary. Since this survey focused on U.S. military conflicts that occurred halfway around the globe, it was unlikely that all respondents would have the same level of understanding. This could have played a role in their answers.
Despite these limitations, this survey still serves as an important barometer in understanding African Americans’ views toward U.S. military intervention in the twenty-first century.
Respondents’ Views on Sending U.S. Troops to Afghanistan and Iraq
Several national surveys have provided insight into how Americans feel about the global war on terror. The Carnegie survey was specifically interested in how African Americans felt about the conflicts. In the first article in this series, we unpacked how a majority of survey respondents (80 percent) held favorable views of the U.S. military.
The survey also asked respondents specific questions about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly about the U.S. decisions to enter and leave the countries. Respondents were first asked if they felt the United States made a mistake sending military forces to Afghanistan in 2001 and to Iraq in 2003. For Afghanistan, respondents were divided; 31 percent believed sending forces was a mistake and 32 percent believed it was not a mistake. Respondents were not as divided in their opinions on the Iraq war. A plurality of respondents (37 percent) viewed the engagement as a mistake, while 29 percent believed it was not a mistake (see figure 1).
A May 2021 Economist survey of the national population mirrored the Carnegie survey. Respondents in the Economist poll were just as divided on the use of troops in Afghanistan, with 36 percent in favor and 39 percent against. For Iraq, 43 percent of respondents viewed engagement there as a mistake. What is of particular interest is that the “don’t know” responses for the Carnegie survey were roughly 10 percentage points higher than the Economist survey. In the Carnegie survey, 37 percent of respondents selected “don’t know” for Afghanistan and 34 percent for Iraq. This is noticeably higher than the 25 percent of respondents who were unsure about both wars in the Economist poll (see figure 2).
Variations in “don’t know” responses across demographics have been highlighted in other surveys. For example, pollsters have explored the reasons why women tend to select “don’t know” more often than men. For the Carnegie survey, there could be many reasons why “don’t know” responses were slightly higher than in the Economist survey. One potential explanation is that African Americans may have focused more of their attention on pressing domestic issues than the wars abroad that received less media attention as they progressed.
Democratic respondents in the Carnegie survey were split on whether the United States should have sent military forces to Afghanistan, and 38 percent of them felt invading Iraq was a mistake. On the other hand, a slim majority of Republican respondents rejected that it was a mistake to send troops to Iraq (51 percent) and Afghanistan (52 percent) (see figure 3). These findings largely registered with other national polls that revealed Republicans were more hawkish than Democrats on the decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. However, as discussed in the previous article, while there has been a subtle realignment in how the political parties view the use of military force abroad, the views of African Americans across parties have remained static.
Respondents with at least one family member who served in Afghanistan or Iraq were the most likely to have an opinion about the wars. A plurality of these respondents (roughly 40 percent) for both wars felt it was a mistake to send military forces. Whereas individuals in the sample aggregate and other demographics were divided over engagement in Afghanistan, those with a family member who served were more likely to believe that engagement was a mistake. The lower level of ambivalence and stronger opinion about the wars being a mistake by this demographic is likely due to their closer proximity to the conflicts, compared to other Americans who viewed the wars was distant phenomenon, especially as the conflicts became prolonged (see figure 4).
Views on Removing Troops From Afghanistan and Iraq
The Carnegie survey then asked respondents if they felt the United States made a mistake by removing military forces from Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan in 2021. Several similarly worded surveys revealed that the majority of Americans believed it was the right decision to remove troops from both Afghanistan and Iraq. The results in the Carnegie survey mirrored other surveys, many respondents believing it was the right decision to remove troops from Afghanistan (47 percent) and Iraq (51 percent). A minority of respondents (15 percent for Iraq and 22 percent for Afghanistan) believed it was a mistake removing troops, while roughly a third did not have or reveal an opinion (see figure 5).
Again, political affiliation offers an interesting window. Across demographics such as age, income, gender, and education, there was a consensus that the United States did not make a mistake removing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. Across political affiliation, there was a consensus only for Iraq that the United States should have removed its troops. However, for Afghanistan, Republican respondents were split on the decision to remove troops (see figure 6). These findings jibe with a similar study conducted by Pew Research Center that revealed Democrats largely approved of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Republicans opposed it.
Views on Whether the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq Benefited America
A majority of respondents (63 percent) felt the war in Afghanistan did not benefit America. A minority (16 percent) believed the war benefited America, and 21 percent felt the war both benefited and negatively impacted the nation. Responses to the same question about Iraq were strikingly similar. A majority (61 percent) felt the war in Iraq did not benefit America, and a minority (13 percent) thought it did. Meanwhile, 26 percent of respondents took the position that the war in Iraq both benefited and negatively impacted America (see figure 7).
“Weaker economy” and “weaker international reputation” were the most popular answers for those who believed the wars did not benefit America. The fact that “weaker economy” was the most popular answer could be explained by respondents believing that the trillions of dollars required to fuel the wars possibly resulted in setbacks for the U.S. economy. For the minority of respondents who believed that the wars did benefit America, more than half selected “better national security” as the benefit.
When examining the 131 respondents who had a family member serve in either war, there was no significant difference from the respondent aggregate, unlike the previous question. The same held true for the demographics of income, education, age, immigration status, and gender. However, there was considerable variation in the responses of those who served in either Afghanistan or Iraq and of those with a political affiliation.
The twenty-six respondents who served reported a higher belief that the wars in Afghanistan (39 percent) and Iraq (38 percent) did benefit America. Meanwhile, a quarter of the eighty Republican respondents reported that the wars benefited America, compared to only 13 percent of Democrats. The sample of veterans who served in either war is small but speaks to how individuals who participated directly in the wars or identify with the Republican Party could have stronger opinions on the military conflicts.
Views on Whether the Wars Benefited Respondents’ Families
Likewise, most respondents did not feel that the wars benefited their families. However, veterans of either war reported the highest levels of benefit for both the United States and their families.
Only 8 percent of respondents believed that the war in Afghanistan benefited their families and 6 percent believed the same for the war in Iraq. When controlling for political affiliation, education, income, gender, and immigration status, there was a consensus in opinion that the wars did not benefit people’s families (see figure 8).
The respondents who reported the highest rate of benefit for their families were those who served in Afghanistan or Iraq. Roughly a third of the twenty-six respondents who served in either war reported a benefit to their families; 57 percent of those respondents believed that there was no benefit to their families. Although the number of wartime-veteran respondents who reported a benefit is significantly higher than the sample aggregate, it is striking that more wartime veterans did not perceive a benefit for their families. Divorce or separation and financial hardship were the most popular responses for why they felt the wars did not benefit their families. Other researchers have highlighted that because the United States relies on an all-voluntary force, military deployments put disproportionate strain on military families, causing distance from family, food insecurity, and financial issues. This finding perhaps explains why a plurality of respondents who had a family member fight reported that it was a mistake to enter the wars. These findings are a reminder for policymakers to remember the well-being of military families as they consider engaging in great-power conflicts.
Conclusion
As was the case in the first article in this series, this survey revealed that African Americans’ views on twenty-first century military conflicts are shaped by various factors. Variations in responses were most pronounced when looking at respondents’ political affiliations and relationships to the U.S. military.
African Americans’ views about the decisions to send military forces to Afghanistan and Iraq mirror those of other members of the American public. Similar to other Americans, African Americans are divided on the decision to enter Afghanistan but embrace the idea that it was a mistake to send forces to Iraq. African Americans with a family member who served in either war felt strongly that it was a mistake to send troops to both countries. Interestingly, African Americans exhibited a higher rate of ambivalence about sending troops compared to members of the general public.
A majority of respondents believed the wars did not benefit the United States or their families. That the wars “weakened the economy” was the most common selection among those who reported a lack of benefit. Interestingly, Republican respondents and those who served in either war reported the highest level of benefit.
This survey reveals that there is a unique tension in African Americans’ views of the U.S. military and its engagement in recent conflicts. While respondents held favorable views of the military (as discussed in the first article of this series), there were ambivalent feelings toward the two long wars against terrorism. The survey results also revealed that while there is a slight realignment in how the nation’s political parties view the use of military force, African American voters of each party have largely remained consistent in their views on war. The results within this survey can prove to be helpful as policymakers attempt to consider Americans’ opinions as they weigh engagement in another military conflict.
Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to the plethora of individuals who helped bring this research to its final form. Special thanks to Alexis Essa, Alexander Marsolais, and their colleagues at YouGov for their help with the design and execution of the survey. Christopher Chivvis, Jennifer Kavanagh, and Milan Vaishnav were instrumental in designing the survey questionnaire and offered invaluable feedback on the research approach. Genevieve Slosberg and Aurora Lopez gave vital feedback and played a critical role in data analysis. Haley Clasen, Lindsay Maizland, Jocelyn Soly, Amy Mellon, and Amanda Branom provided excellent editorial, graphic design, and publication assistance.
