Americans’ confidence in the US military has hit a 26-year low, a new Gallup poll has revealed.
According to the survey, confidence has plummeted over the past five years, and now just 60% of the public says they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the American military.
Gallup recalled that public confidence in the military was “last this low” in 1997.
The figure surged after the Gulf War victory to a record-high 85% in 1991, but finally fell to 69% in 2021, dipping further since then, following the US troops’ exit from Afghanistan.
A “precipitous drop” in confidence after “the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle is a reflection of the sort of the hangover from this 20 year-war that was waged in a country where we had no strategic interest, frankly, and the whole thing was a farce from the beginning,” army infantry veteran Tyler Nixon told Sputnik.
He said that in his opinion, “when you have troops in harm’s way, such as they were, […] people have to maintain that [public] confidence because it’s sort of a reflection of their support for the military.”
Ukrainian military medics carry a wounded Ukrainian serviceman delivered from a front line position to a stabilization point. – Sputnik International, 1920, 04.08.2023
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Separately, Nixon singled out the Ukraine conflict, saying that “we’ve got this going on, whether that’s military directly or not.”
“Unfortunately, they [Americans] know that we’re sending arms. I think that impacts as well on the confidence people have in the military. […] I hope we don’t get into any more wars,” the army veteran pointed out.
The comments come a few days after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kiev’s counteroffensive is unsuccessful in all directions, and that Moscow will continue its special military operation in Ukraine.
He added that “The multibillion-dollar resources that were transferred by NATO countries to the Kiev regime are actually spent inefficiently, spent pointlessly, and this also raises big questions for Western capitals, and great discomfort for taxpayers in Western capitals.”
The US and its allies ramped up their military supplies to Kiev – which is already worth billions of dollars – shortly after Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine.
