As Tom Brokaw noted in a New York Times op-ed last week, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken a back seat in the mid-term elections. One might even say the wars have been relegated to the trunk, or the rack on top, or they’ve been left behind entirely. Brokaw speculates that this is because there’s no draft anymore. The majority of Americans, writes Brokaw, “can opt out of the call to arms… nothing much is asked of them in the war effort.”
But Daniel Drezner notes that Iraq did play a big role in the 2006 midterms, and there certainly was still no draft then, so there must be another explanation. He posits a much more likely possibility: this is a case in which both parties are united in an unpopular position, so the topic doesn’t factor into political discussions. This seems likely, as sad as it is. Sixty percent of American voters dub Afghanistan “a lost cause.” And Sixty-five percent of Americans oppose the Iraq War. And yet Democrats and Republican politicians are fairly united in supporting the president on both fronts. It will interesting to see how these issues play out in 2012.
