Comment by belorn
4 days ago
Public opinion in 2001 and 2003 followed the 9/11 terror attack and was very fresh in peoples mind. A more recent war (2015) would be the attack on Yemen by Barack Obama.
I can however not find any good public opinion for that war.
I don't think Americans perceive much of a difference between attacking Al Qaeda++ in Afghanistan versus in Yemen, certainly not enough to see it as "a different war", and it's not clear that perception is incorrect.
Entirely different, from an American perspective.
Afghanistan had the context of 9/11. All Americans knew about 9/11, and most cared strongly about it.
I doubt most Americans know anything about Yemen or know anything about any US involvement there, nor do they care.
Military strikes in Yemen aren't seen as the same war. Afghanistan and Iraq were boots on the ground, building up military bases, hearing about the occasional death of US personnel, etc. It's also decades apart.
When it comes to Yemen, the average American is probably entirely unaware of it, and the ones that do know about it are definitely going to place it in the Palestine/Israel context (which has huge mindshare circulation here, All things considered - we usually just ignore things outside of US borders and this is ultra politicized here). Maybe without that element, there would be more truth to what you were saying, but it's definitely in the Israel/Hamas war bucket as of now.
I think Americans are broadly aware that the US has been striking AQ, AQ++, and ISIS affiliates across the Middle East as part of the broader GWOT/OIR for years, and the exact jurisdictions in which it happens are essentially implementation details.
As of a few months ago, when the US began striking Yemen for purpose of defending Israel, it ha become loosely affiliated with that conflict, but the period discussed was Obama era.
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We've been bombing Yemen on and off since post 9/11, including a rather large attack with UK support just last year (2025). Are you thinking of the Saudi-led intervention that occurred in 2015 in Yemen as part of the Yemeni civil war? Or maybe when we built a base there in 2011 to facilitate more drones?