US soldiers at scene of car bomb blast, near US Embassy, Kabul, Afghanistan./US Army soldier stands near vehicles destroyed afte bomb blast at a parking lot in central Baghdad, Iraq.
(AP Photo)
Americans increasingly see progress in Iraq yet by a wide margin continue to say the war there was not worth fighting – a sharp contrast to Afghanistan, where views of progress are far more subdued but support for the U.S.-led war is higher, albeit not high.
Sixty-one percent say the United States is making significant progress restoring civil order in Iraq, whose prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, visits the White House today. That's the highest in polls the past five years, and up 21 points since spring 2008.
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Yet views on the Iraq war's justification are as sour as ever: Sixty-two percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say it was not worth fighting. Majorities have held that view steadily for more than four and a half years – disapproval that pushed then-President George W. Bush into deep and long-lasting unpopularity.
Fifty-one percent, moreover, feel "strongly" that the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, vs. 21 percent who strongly feel the opposite. That negative intensity, too, is long-lived.
With combat roles for U.S. troops in Iraq winding down, al-Maliki visits Washington to pay respects to U.S. soldiers and meet with President Obama to seek U.S. investment in Iraq and discuss political reconciliation among Iraq's sectarian and ethnic groups. That may not be easy: An ABC/BBC/NHK poll in Iraq earlier this year found continued sharp ethnosectarian differences in the country, albeit leavened by sharply improved security, greater public optimism and broader support for democracy.
AFGHANISTAN – While Americans by nearly 2-1 say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, the war in Afghanistan continues to draw more of a split decision: Fifty-one percent say the war there has been worth the costs, vs. 45 percent who say not.
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