725. Two Third of Americans Want an End to the War in Afghanistan, New Poll Shows

American soldiers urinate on the
bodies of the dead in Afghanistan

By The New York Times, March 27, 2012

In Tuesday’s New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller and Allison Kopicki write about findings from the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which found two-thirds of those polled — 69 percent — thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan.

They report:  

The increased disillusionment was even more pronounced when respondents were asked their impressions of how the war was going. The poll found that 68 percent thought the fighting was going “somewhat badly” or “very badly,” compared with 42 percent who had those impressions in November.

The results of the New York Times/CBS News poll align with several others done recently on the same question, including a Pew Research Center poll and a Gallup/USA Today poll. And the negative view of the war also appears to be growing increasingly bipartisan. According to Ms. Bumiller and Ms. Kopicki, 60 percent of Republican respondents said the war was going somewhat or very badly, up 20 percent since the poll in November. And among Democrats, 68 percent said the war was going somewhat or very badly, compared with 38 percent in November.

The poll comes in the midst a flurry of bad news from the battlefield, including accusations that Staff Sgt. Robert Bales of the Army killed 17 Afghan civilians in the Panjwai district, in southern Kandahar Province, in early March, and violence set off by the burning last month of Korans by American troops. Most recently, there have been several attacks on NATO troops in Afghanistan and a suspected plot to blow up commuter buses near the Afghan Defense Ministry.