Afghan war support hits new record low: Poll
A recent opinion poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans are against Washington-led Afghan war and want a withdrawal of US forces from the war-ravaged Asian country.
According to the ABC News/Washington poll conducted by telephone between April 5 and 8, 2012, with a random sample of 1,003 adult respondents, six in 10 Americans believe most Afghans themselves oppose the US occupation.
Furthermore, eight in 10 say the US military should improve mental-health monitoring and limit combat duty of American soldiers deployed to Afghanistan.
On March 11, a US soldier killed at least 16 civilians and wounded five others in Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar as he went on a house-to-house shooting spree.
He left his military base in the early hours of the morning and opened fire in at least two homes.
Nine children and three women were among the dead.
Two-thirds of Americans now say the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting -- a new high that matches peak opposition to the Iraq war almost exactly five years ago.
Support for the Afghanistan war, at just 30 percent, is 3 points lower than the lowest on record for Iraq.
According to official figures released by the website icasualties.org, a total of 1,932 American soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October 2001, when the US-led invasion of the country began.
Insecurity continues to rise across Afghanistan despite the presence of thousands of US-led soldiers in the conflict-plagued country.
The United Nations announced on February 4 that the year 2011 was the deadliest on record for Afghan civilians. The death toll rose eight percent compared to the year before and was roughly double the figure for 2007.
Overall, 3,021 civilians died in violence related to the war and 4,507 were wounded in 2011.