Poll: Afghan war support hits new low

Public support for the war in Afghanistan has reached a new
low, according to an AP-GfK poll released Wednesday.

The poll found 66 percent of the public opposes the war, compared with just 27 percent support. Among the opponents of the war, 40 percent said they are “strongly opposed.”

Support for the war stood at 37 percent in May 2011, and at 46 percent in March 2010.

The shift in public opinion comes after a
series of incidents that have raised questions about the U.S. presence there. Those
include a video of Marines urinating on dead Taliban, the burning of Qurans at
an air base, a rogue U.S. soldier killing Afghan civilians and photos of
soldiers posing with dead body parts.

{mosads}President Obama has resisted calls to speed up his planned withdrawal
pace, and signed an agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to keep a small
U.S. presence there through 2024, 10 years after security control is handed to
the Afghans in 2014.

Despite the opposition to the war, the poll found that 53
percent of respondents support Obama’s handling of Afghanistan, while 42 oppose it.

The president received low marks on Afghanistan in a poll released by The Hill on Monday. In the survey of 1,000 likely voters, 40 percent rated the president’s handling of the war as “excellent” or “good,” versus 29 percent who said it was “fair” and 30 percent who rated it as “poor.”

A year after Osama bin Laden’s death, the AP-GfK poll asked
respondents whether his death increased or decreased the threat of terrorism,
finding 27 percent thought it had increased the threat and 31 decreased. But
that was down from the 50 percent who thought it had increased the threat in May
2011, just days after his death.