Obama: Bipartisan support for war plan

by Mark Silva and updated

Americans only narrowly support the "new way forward'' that President Barack Obama has announced for the U.S. military in Afghanistan - with 51 percent supporting the strategy unveiled this week at West Point.

And the public is divided in its confidence that the plan - adding 30,000 troops by next summer, and then beginning a troop drawdown in July 2011 - will succeed. Just 48 percent see success in the strategy, while 45 percent say it is unlikely to achieve its aims, according new findings of the Gallup Poll today.

Notable also is the fact that the president also has found bipartisan support for his war plan.

"President Obama has managed to thread the needle with his newly announced Afghanistan strategy, with his approach winning the approval of a majority of both Democrats (58 percent) and Republicans (55 percent),'' Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport reports.

It is independents who are less supportive - just 45 percent of those surveyed supporting the announced strategy.

Overall public opinion runs 51 percent for it, 40 percent opposed. The president's own overall job approval, which dipped to a year's low of 48 percent in the Gallup Poll last month, stood at 52 percent in the latest measure today, following the president's appearance before cadets at West Point to deliver a nationally televised speech.

(CNN/Opinion Research Corp. today reported 48 percent approval for the president's overall job performance.)

"Obama's new policy has managed to bridge the pre-existing partisan gap on this issue to some degree, bringing the support levels of Democrats and Republicans closer together,'' Newport writes. While Republicans are reluctant about the timetable to start withdrawing forces, he suggests, they support the deployment. And whle Democrats are more reluctant about the deployment, they support the goal for withdrawal.

The question asked of those surveyed Wednesday's explicitly associated the policy with Obama, and included a reference to both the increase of 30,000 U.S. troops and the setting of a timetable that calls for the U.S. to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in 2011. The overall 51 percent approval measured was slightly higher than he number who said in November that they support the concept of adding troops.

The survey also asked about both the new deployment, which will boost U.S. forces in Afghanistan to nearly 100,000 by next summer, and the plan to start drawing down forces the following summer - with both the pace and the endpoint of that withdrawal dependent on "conditions on the ground'' in the president's policy.

Most believe that the number of new troops being sent as part of the new strategy is either too high (36 percent) or about right (38 percent). Relatively few view it as too low: (18 percent.

But 46 percent of those surveyed say it is too soon to set a timetable for beginning to withdraw troops.

"All in all, slightly more than half of Americans support Obama's new policy in Afghanistan, while 4 out of 10 oppose it,' Newport notes. "The president at the moment enjoys an unusual situation in which a majority of both Democrats and Republicans favor his newly announced strategy. This level of bipartisan support is counterbalanced to a degree, however, by the fact that less than half of independents support the plan...

"It may be that while Democrats disagree with the specifics of the timetable as announced, they approve of the idea of having any timetable included. And it may be that while Republicans strongly disagree with the having any timetable included, they approve of the general idea of an increase of troop levels.

"Whatever the explanations, the bottom line at the moment is that Obama has managed to generate a slim majority support among all Americans for his new policy.''

Gallup's Jeffrey Jones today also notes that "there are a significant number of doubters even among those who support the new war policy. Among this group, 61 percent believe the U.S. is likely to achieve its goals, but 35 percent are pessimistic. Likewise, though the majority of the new policy's opponents do not expect the U.S. to achieve its goals in Afghanistan, that is far from a unanimous position.''

Some opponents of escalating the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan question the increasing costs. The poll found 73 percent worried that the war's costs make it more difficult for the U.S. to address domestic problems. The president said this week the strategy will cost an additional $30 billion the first year

The survey of 1,005 adults was conducted Dec. 2, and has a possible 4 percentage point margin of error.