North America

Poll: War on terror ‘wrong thing to do’

340815_US war Afghanistan

A majority of Americans want President Barack Obama to pull US troops out of Afghanistan faster than he’s doing, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

The poll released on Wednesday found that 57 percent of Americans now say going to war in Afghanistan after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington was probably the “wrong thing to do.”

Fifty-three percent say the speed of the planned withdrawal from the Asian country is too slow, 34 percent said the pace was just about right, and 10 percent said it was too fast. All combat troops are scheduled to leave by the end of 2014.

Just 16 percent of those polled said they expected the situation in Afghanistan to “get better” over the next year if US troops remain; 32 percent said they expected it to “get worse” while about half said they expected the situation to “stay about the same.”

The AP-GfK poll was conducted Dec. 5-9 to rate President Obama’s handling of foreign policy and domestic issues.

The US is trying to force Kabul into signing a security deal with Washington so US troops can remain in Afghanistan beyond the 2014 withdrawal deadline. The security deal would also give US troops immunity from prosecution in Afghan courts.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 under the pretext of “war on terror.” Thousands of Afghan civilians, including a large number of women and children, have been killed since then during night raids by foreign forces and CIA-run assassination drone strikes.

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