Krystal Zimmerman, an Army veteran who fought in Iraq, is worried about America’s latest war in the Middle East. She supported attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, but as the conflict lurches from bombings and threats of annihilation to a shaky truce with no clear exit, she worries that President Trump has now stumbled into his own forever war.
“It’s a waste of resources, a waste of money, and we come off as bullies,” Ms. Zimmerman, 40, said after she wrapped up a recent appointment at a Veterans Affairs clinic in Colorado Springs, where she receives treatment for the depression and sleeplessness that followed her home from Baghdad.
Many Americans are expressing anger, frustration, even bewilderment as the war on Iran grinds into its seventh week. Over the weekend, peace talks fizzled, and Mr. Trump reverted to bombast and conflicting statements as he ordered a blockade of Iranian ports to counter Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Public-opinion surveys show that roughly six in 10 Americans oppose the U.S.-led war against Iran, a striking shift from the solid public support that accompanied the United States’ invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s, or the Persian Gulf war in the 1990s. Some say they are simply baffled by a war that they feel the president did not prepare them for and that still has not been clearly explained.
“I don’t think Trump is making wise decisions,” Emmelia Lorenzen, 19, said as she and a friend sipped coffees in Fayetteville, N.C., home to the sprawling Fort Bragg Army base, which serves as headquarters to both Army Special Operations and the Third Special Forces Group.
But it has been a muted opposition, unfurling in conversations at cafes and veterans’ halls, and prompting smaller demonstrations instead of the huge protests that accompanied the Vietnam War or the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
“I’m incredulous that more people aren’t in the streets but, yeah, it’s kind of hard to be surprised or even shocked by anything he does now,” Mike Keefe, 64, said of the president as he stood with a diminished cluster of protesters outside an immigration detention center in Portland, Ore.
The opposition to the Iran war splits largely along party lines. Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the war, while most Republican voters back the president, according to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center before the recent cease-fire.
But in a sign of potential trouble for President Trump and Republicans fighting to keep control of Congress, the Pew survey also found that independent voters who lean toward the Republican Party were more closely divided, with 52 percent saying they approved of how Mr. Trump was handling the war and 45 percent saying they disapproved.
Fissures within the Republican Party are primarily coming from outside of Mr. Trump’s core base, according to a CNN poll taken in mid-March. Republicans who do not identify as “MAGA Republicans” are less likely to support the war than their MAGA counterparts.
Young Republicans are also far less likely to approve of Mr. Trump’s decision to take military action than are Republicans older than 45, according to the poll.
Voters who identify themselves as independent, overall, fall firmly in opposition.
Even Republicans who are supportive of the war overall do not necessarily think things are progressing especially smoothly. Only about half of those Republicans said they thought the war was going well, according to the Pew poll.
In three dozen recent interviews, voters in military towns including Colorado Springs, San Antonio and Fayetteville worried that Mr. Trump, who campaigned as a peace president opposed to fighting “stupid wars,” was bumbling the United States into another Iraq or Afghanistan.
Six weeks in, many said they still had no clear sense of the president’s goals in Iran, or why he had joined Israel in attacking now. It all felt so fast and erratic, they said. Past presidents, such as George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, spent weeks, if not months, making the case for the attack on Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq and the operation to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. Coalitions, willing or not, were formed. Debates rang through the halls of Congress.
Nothing like that preceded the attack on Iran. And the blizzard of shifting statements that Mr. Trump has offered in phone calls with reporters and late-night Truth Social posts only added to some people’s confusion.
Nearly two-thirds of voters — and 71 percent of political independents — said they thought Mr. Trump had not provided a clear explanation in the lead up to the war, according a Quinnipiac University poll from early March.
By contrast, polls showed that a large majority of the public felt that Mr. Bush had made a compelling case ahead of the war in Iraq.
Ms. Lorenzen, who voted for Mr. Trump, was particularly disturbed by his vow to annihilate the entire Iranian civilization if Iran did not reopen the Strait of Hormuz — a threat averted at the last minute when the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week cease fire.
“One of Trump’s biggest campaign motives was that he is not a man of war,” Ms. Lorenzen said. “And then you see us moving to war so quickly after saying that. It just doesn’t really make sense.”
The failures in Iraq and Afghanistan — which killed more than 7,000 American service members and contractors — shaped voters’ views of America’s latest war of choice. In interviews, they brought up the false claims about weapons of mass destruction used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the bloody withdrawal from Afghanistan, and wondered whether history was about to repeat itself.
Queta Rodriguez, 55, a Marine veteran who was working at a base in Quantico, Va., on Sept. 11, 2001, said she remembered a sense of collective grief and American solidarity after the attacks. She had disagreed with Mr. Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq but felt he had at least tried to bring Americans on board.
Now, Ms. Rodriguez, who lives in San Antonio, said she was angry with Mr. Trump for taking the nation to war in a region where many soldiers had already lost lives. She felt disappointed with Congress for not reining in the president, and saddened that many Americans seemed to be tuning out.
Other veterans and military family members — who generally skew Republican — said they still supported Mr. Trump and his war. They applauded him for attacking a theocracy that sponsored terrorism across the Middle East and had helped to kill hundreds of American troops.
If Mr. Trump’s critics said the attacks on Iran were haphazard, his supporters believed they were overdue.
“It’s a threat — it needs to be neutralized,” said Gary Freese, 58, who served in Iraq and now rides his Harley Davidson motorcycle through the Rocky Mountains. He said Mr. Trump had showed “he’s got spine” by attacking Iran.
There is also a wellspring of support for Mr. Trump’s war in places like rural western Iowa, where he won the last three presidential elections by increasing margins.
Kelly Garrett, 51, who sells steaks from the cattle he raises, was one of several farmers who supported the administration’s attacks on Iran even if they did not fully understand the rationale. Many Republicans hold an abiding trust in the president.
Farm country, already reeling from Mr. Trump’s tariffs and immigration enforcement, suffered another economic hit when the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz sent fertilizer and diesel prices skyrocketing just as farmers were preparing their fields and machinery for planting.
Yet many Republican farmers in Iowa blamed the high prices on corporate profiteers, not Mr. Trump.
Wayne Brincks, 72, a retired farmer, said the short-term pain would be worth it if it prevented Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
“These guys are religious zealots,” Mr. Brincks said of Iran’s leadership. “I think the president thought it was now or never, and we had to do something.”
But even in deep-red Iowa, doubts and worries are starting to emerge like the first shoots of corn. Mark Nelson, 35, a farmer and Republican supervisor in Woodbury County who voted for Mr. Trump, said the attacks undermined the president’s “America First” message. That criticism has also been bubbling up among influencers in the Trump movement, including from Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and Megyn Kelly.
“The amount of money and resources that have gone into this war is ridiculous,” Mr. Nelson said. He had questions about how much Israel had influenced the president’s decision to enter the war. “I don’t think there was any imminent danger.”
Jack Healy is based in Colorado and covers the west and southwest.
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