Revisiting Public Opinion on Iraq and Afghanistan

On the heels of a rather quiet announcement last week by President Obama to send 17,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan comes the news that Obama is expected to officially announce a full combat troop withdrawal from Iraq by August 2010. (But some residual U.S. forces would remain to train and support the Iraqi military). Both items echo pledges that Obama made during his presidential campaign, though the Iraq pullout would extend the original timetable by three more months. Much has been said about the enormous strain both wars have placed on the U.S. military, and indeed, an increased presence in Afghanistan would require a diminished presence in Iraq.

And the public, for the most part, seems to favor these decisions on both fronts. Two-thirds of Americans support the move to send more troops to Afghanistan, which Gallup notes has remarkable support from respondents of all political affiliation -- in fact, more Republicans (75 percent) than Democrats (65 percent) support the increase. Seven in 10 Americans recently told Gallup that they believed the Taliban will retake control of Afghanistan if the United States withdraws its forces. In our own Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index tabulated last spring, just 28 percent gave the U.S. an A or B grade for "succeeding in meeting our objectives in Afghanistan," even though 58 percent said "creating a stable Afghanistan" was something the U.S. could do "a lot" or "something" about.

On Iraq, three-quarters of respondents in this week's CBS News/New York Times poll (pdf) said it's "very" or "somewhat important" that the U.S. withdraw most of its combat troops from Iraq within 16 months. Most believe the war was not worth fighting in the first place, and just over half say the timetable Obama has proposed is "about right". Our Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index showed an emphatic 80 percent said they worry "a lot" or "somewhat" that the war in Iraq is "requiring so much money and attention that it may be distracting the United States from other threats in the world," and two-thirds said the U.S. should withdraw its troops from Iraq either immediately or within 12 months. But one consistent finding in the Foreign Policy Index has been that majorities say the U.S. has a moral obligation to the Iraqi people, suggesting that Americans want to leave Iraq, but not in a way that leaves the Iraqis in the lurch.