Bringing the war in Afghanistan to a speedy end may be one of the most political goals for 2011. There is a lot of pressure from within the military establishment on President Obama to extend the occupation of that country and to emphasize the military's role to bring peace in that nine-year war. Any day now, the military brass insists, missiles and drones will cause peace to break.

Failure to adopt a swifter exit, however, may harm Obama's presidency. New polling data from ABC/Washington Post shows that people link their disapproval of the war in Afghanistan to their opinion of him an his work:

A record 60 percent of Americans say the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting, a grim assessment -- and a politically hazardous one -- in advance of the Obama administration's one-year review of its revised strategy.



Public dissatisfaction with the war, now the nation's longest, has spiked by 7 points just since July. Given its costs vs. its benefits, only 34 percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say the war's been worth fighting, down by 9 points to a new low, by a sizable margin.



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Negative views of the war for the first time are at the level of those recorded for the war in Iraq, whose unpopularity dragged George W. Bush to historic lows in approval across his second term. On average from 2005 through 2009, 60 percent called that war not worth fighting, the same number who say so about Afghanistan now. (It peaked at 66 percent in April 2007.)



As support for the Iraq war went down, approval of Bush's job performance fell in virtual lockstep, a strongly cautionary note for President Obama. Presidents Truman and Johnson also saw their approval ratings drop sharply during the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

In related news, a group of "Afghanistan experts" released an open letter to President Obama urging a new course in Afghanistan that deemphasizes military efforts in favor of a negotiated peace process. Here's a portion of that letter:

We have been engaged and working inside Afghanistan, some of us for decades, as academics, experts and members of non-governmental organizations. Today we are deeply worried about the current course of the war and the lack of credible scenarios for the future. The cost of the war is now over $120 billion per year for the United States alone. This is unsustainable in the long run. In addition, human losses are increasing. Over 680 soldiers from the international coalition – along with hundreds of Afghans – have died this year in Afghanistan, and the year is not yet over. We appeal to you to use the unparalleled resources and influence which the United States now brings to bear in Afghanistan to achieve that longed-for peace.



Despite these huge costs, the situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country. It is now very difficult to work outside the cities or even move around Afghanistan by road. The insurgents have built momentum, exploiting the shortcomings of the Afghan government and the mistakes of the coalition. The Taliban today are now a national movement with a serious presence in the north and the west of the country. Foreign bases are completely isolated from their local environment and unable to protect the population. Foreign forces have by now been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Red Army.

It's pretty obvious that in the new session of Congress, the Republicans are going to push relentlessly for more tax breaks for the rich, more cuts to working families-oriented social spending, and they will scream every day about the deficit (which ironically they just voted to increase by $1 trillion). Bringing the war in Afghanistan to a swift end is the best way to restore peace, reduce the U.S. military role in Asia, and bring U.S. spending under more control.

Will Republicans ever put an exit from Afghanistan on the list for reducing the deficit (or military spending in general)? Absolutely not. It will be up to us to force it onto the table. It may be the best way to save Social Security, Medicare, education, aid to the unemployed, and so on.

Photo by AFL-CIO, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0