The last plane left Kabul this afternoon, meeting the deadline Biden and the Afghans had agreed upon. The final days were ugly, chaotic, violent and tragic. I don’t know how anyone could have expected otherwise. This is why we should never go to war unless there is absolutely no choice.
The New York Times assigned one of its reporters to see what Real People are thinking. Uncharacteristically, they went to a swing district in California of all places. (How many Real Americans can there be in that godless place?)
Spent the weekend talking to dozens of voters in a split district about Afghanistan.
The overarching sentiment was crises fatigue — and not much anger at Biden.
“It’s not our war to fight anymore,” one mother of three told me. She was far more focused on getting her kids back to in-person school.
Originally tweeted by Jennifer Medina (@jennymedina) on August 30, 2021.
At a time of deep partisan division, in a Southern California congressional district where Democrats narrowly outnumber Republicans, voters interviewed over the weekend were largely united on at least one issue: After a two-decade war, President Biden was right to pull American troops out of Afghanistan.
The bombing at the Kabul airport had done little to change their minds, the killing of 13 soldiers leaving them more numbed than saddened. Many said they were simply too overwhelmed to pay close attention to another overseas crisis. “We have a lot of mending here to do,” said Ms. Ortiz, who considers herself a political moderate and voted for Mr. Biden.
Amid a still-raging pandemic and a still-recovering economy, this was a time to be focused on problems at home rather than abroad, more than a dozen Republican, Democratic and independent voters said in conversations in and around Hacienda Heights, a community of 55,000 people about 20 miles east of downtown Los Angeles where first- and second-generation immigrants fill the subdivisions and strip malls.
Afghanistan could be ignored, they said, but the possibility of their too-young-to-be-vaccinated children getting sick could not. Leaders in Washington might worry about the threat of terrorism or America’s standing with allies, but voters in Hacienda Heights said they were far more concerned about issues affecting them directly: Covid-19, homelessness and climate change, to name a few.
They also seemed hesitant to hold Mr. Biden accountable for last week’s attacks, at least for now.
“When you have no good choice, you still have to pick one,” said Patrick Huang, a 65-year-old independent who has voted for both Republicans and Democrats. “They had plenty of time to prepare to get everybody out, and they totally messed it up. But I don’t blame President Biden for everything. This came after many, many presidents made mistakes.”
Less than a decade ago, California’s 39th Congressional District was reliably Republican. Encompassing the intersection of suburban Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside Counties, it is perhaps best known as Richard Nixon’s birthplace. Today, the district is about evenly divided among Asian American, Latino and white voters and is among the more competitive in the country: Although Mr. Biden won easily, a Republican captured the House seat from an incumbent Democrat in 2020.
Richard Yeung and Emily Chen, who both voted for Mr. Biden last fall, remember the unity that came after the Sept. 11 attacks, when they were teenagers. By the time they were in their mid-20s, they said, they began to question why the United States remained in Afghanistan.
Ms. Chen spoke of the human toll in Afghanistan, but quickly added: “There’s nothing we can do. My priorities are more domestic — health and climate, what is that going to look like?”
Even some Republicans who voted for Donald Trump last fall were reluctant to criticize Mr. Biden.
“They maybe exited more quickly than they should have, but I think it was right to be out,” said Andrew Chang, 40, as he shopped with his wife, Tonya Chang, in downtown Fullerton. “It was multiple presidents’ missteps. And we couldn’t have stayed there forever.”
Ms. Chang, 32, said she had largely paid attention to what was happening with Afghan women through forums on Reddit.
“Hearing what they go through is horrible, there’s no way around that,” she said. But she said her vote was highly unlikely to be swayed over international issues. “I’m much more concerned about what is happening here,” she said. Taxes remained the most important issue for her.
Even Representative Young Kim, a Republican who flipped the seat last year, was less critical of the president than many lawmakers in her party.
“We don’t have the luxury to be sad about what is happening, but we have to be resolute, gather information and get people to safety,” Ms. Kim said in an interview. “This is not the time to point fingers, when people are desperate and people are dying.”
But Ms. Kim added that she has heard from constituents who “are not satisfied with what they are seeing and hearing from our commander in chief.”
Inja Yun, 76, who voted for Democrats for much of her life until Mr. Trump convinced her she had been “brainwashed” by liberals, said she did not support anything Mr. Biden has done.
“He left Americans behind,” Ms. Yun said. “He left how many people there. He led them to become sacrifices. He is old, and he allowed young people to die. The only thing that makes me optimistic is that Trump is willing to fight back.”
Though many voters seemed to be disengaging emotionally from events in Afghanistan, they seemed inclined nonetheless to see the United States do more to take in Afghan refugees. This month, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to call on Mr. Biden to increase the cap on refugees and include an additional 100,000 people from Afghanistan.
There’s more of the same at the link. I suspect that reflects a majority of the country. There’s just so much going on at home. These people seem to be tired of the war and are ready to let this go.
The right wing and the media clearly are not. So we’ll have to see where we are in a few weeks. I honestly cannot predict how that’s going to go.