This week's Newsweek cover leads with the title, "Rethinking Afghanistan" and features an essay from Richard Haass at the Council on Foreign Relations, warning that the war isn't worth the cost and the current policy isn't working. It's gratifying to see the message that Brave New Foundation's Rethink Afghanistan campaign has pushed for a year on the front pages of such a mainstream publication. To Haas and the Newsweek team: we're glad to have you with us.
Newsweek's cover is just the latest sign that opposition to this brutal, costly war is now the norm, and American policy-makers had better take notice. Public opposition for to this war has exploded.
According to Newsweek's latest poll, 53 percent of those surveyed disapprove of the way President Obama is handling the Afghanistan War, and only 37 percent approve.
- 60 percent want to "stick to the plan to start withdrawal of forces in July of next year, even if the country is still as unstable as it is today." Only 37 percent are "open to keeping the current number of forces in Afghanistan -- or even adding more -- if the country is still unstable in July of next year."
- A whopping 58 percent of those surveyed think the war is a lost cause, compared to 36 percent who think that winning is even a possibility.
And finally, Pew Research/National Journal Congressional Connection's poll on July 8-11 found that a whopping 42 percent of people surveyed want to remove troops ASAP, up ten points since February.
But politics aside, our elected officials should end this war for the most basic of reasons: it's a brutal policy that's not working and that's not worth the costs. It's not worth the life of one more American troop or one more Afghan civilian. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once noted about an earlier counterinsurgency in someone else's country: "The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
If you want to help end this war, join Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook.