Americans’ support for the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time low, polls show.
A Sept. 1 CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll found that 57 percent opposed the war, while 42 percent supported it. The number of Americans opposed to the war is up 11 percentage points since April and is the highest since the war began in October 2001, when American forces invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and to eradicate al Qaeda after the attacks on American soil on Sept. 11.
The polls present a challenge for President Obama, who has pledged 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, which will bring the total to 68,000 American service members. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, assesses that the Obama administration needs to deploy an additional 20,000 to 40,000 troops. Given the recent poll numbers, the Obama administration would have to rally Congress to support a greater investment in Afghanistan. Support for the war is declining just as the bad news from Afghanistan accelerates. In August, 47 U.S. troops were killed, rendering it the deadliest month since the war began.
“People are weary of eight years of war and, unfortunately, the previous administration didn’t take the war in Afghanistan seriously and now we are seeing escalating violence,” said Jonathan Morgenstein, a senior national security policy fellow at Third Way, a progressive think tank in Washington. “World War II took only four years to fight, and the American people are wondering why it is taking so long to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda,” he said.
According to an Aug. 31 Pew Global Attitudes survey, 42 percent of Americans disapprove of sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Significant opposition to troop increases also was found in all NATO countries polled, including Germany, with 63 percent; France, with 62 percent; Poland, with 57 percent; Canada, with 55 percent; Britain, with 51 percent; and Spain, with 50 percent.
A Rasmussen telephone survey showed that 20 percent of U.S. voters say all American troops should be brought home from Afghanistan immediately. Thirty-one percent of Democrats favor a complete withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, compared with 13 percent of Republicans and 14 percent of voters not affiliated with either party.
Yet policy analysts caution a war-weary public. “Withdrawal is not an option,” said Scott Payne, policy adviser for Third Way. “We must continue to fight to prevent al Qaeda from launching attacks on the United States and getting a foothold in Afghanistan. If we don’t control the ground in Afghanistan, we are not going to kill Osama bin Laden and defeat the Taliban.”
Rasmussen also reports that 55 percent of American voters now expect the war in Afghanistan to get worse during the next six months - a 14-point increase from a survey conducted the previous month. A Sept. 4 Gallup Poll showed that 61 percent of Americans think the situation is going badly for the U.S. in Afghanistan - a six-percentage-point increase from last year. Despite this, Gallup found that fewer than half of Americans, 37 percent, think the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan was a mistake - a three-point percent increase from last year.
“The American public needs to remember why we are in Afghanistan,” Mr. Payne said. They need to be reminded that there are serious national security interests at stake. We know Afghanistan is hard, but it is truly worth doing and is in America’s self-interest to preserve national security.”
• Loredana Vuoto is president of Eloquence, a speechwriting and writing services firm based in Washington.
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