The contrast between attitudes toward military involvement in Afghanistan and Iran fits into a temporal pattern. Americans generally like their wars to be successful or short — and ideally both.
As Obama weighs difficult choices in Afghanistan, the public also appears to be finding it difficult to judge the merits of different options for expanding, maintaining or contracting the U.S. effort on that front.
Those with close contacts to servicemembers in Iraq or Afghanistan tend to be more supportive of the Iraq war but their differences with those who are not closely connected are relatively modest.