Newshoggers Archive: CNN Poll: 63% of Americans Want Out Of Afghanistan

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, January 3, 2011

CNN Poll: 63% of Americans Want Out Of Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd

You can fool some of the people all of the time...especially if they vote Republican.

More than six in ten Americans oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan, according to a new national poll. And a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday also indicates that 56 percent of the public believes that things are going badly for the U.S. in Afghanistan.

Sixty-three percent of people questioned in the poll say they oppose the war, with 35 percent saying they support the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

...The survey indicates a partisan divide, with three-quarters of Democrats and more then six in ten independent voters opposed to the war, and Republicans supporting it by a 52 to 44 percent margin. A minority of Democrats and independents say the war is going well, with a majority of Republicans saying things are going well for the U.S.

Afghanistan, Obama's war of choice, has now gone the way of Iraq: only Republicans now support the ongoing occupation, and that only by a thin margin.

So where's our democracy?

Well, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R) is showing he's divorced from reality, as always, by saying that not only should the U.S. have permanent bases in Afghanistan, but that the Afghans have to "earn" those bases...

And as figures are announced that show over 10,000 people were killed last year in Afghanistan, with civilian deaths and injuries up 20% on last year, NATO spokesman Brig. General Josef Blotz channeled World War One era British Field Marshall Douglas "Butcher" Haig to give some bass-ackwards justification for the death toll:

"Our casualties are not a proof of any failure of our strategy. On the contrary,"..."before it gets better, unfortunately it has to get worse"

Suuuure, General. And I'm sure Haig said something similiar just before the Somme. But sometimes, it getting worse is just because it's getting worse.

What does it tell us when one anonymous U.S. commander is reported as describing Afghanistan as a " non-stop "Tom and Jerry" cartoon, but life-claiming and hazardous"?

Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Monday, January 3, 2011

CNN Poll: 63% of Americans Want Out Of Afghanistan

No comments:

Post a Comment