Washington: About three-quarters of US adults say they support bringing home the troops of the country from Iraq and Afghanistan in a new poll commissioned by the libertarian Charles Koch Institute.
The poll, which surveyed 2,000 US adults, 44 per cent said they strongly support bringing US troops home from Iraq and 30 per cent said they somewhat support doing so.
For Afghanistan, 46 per cent said they strongly support bringing troops home and 30 per cent said they somewhat support it.
The poll was conducted by YouGov for the Charles Koch Institute, the research institute founded by conservative mega-donor Charles Koch that advocates a non-interventionist foreign policy, including supporting withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Given how polarised the country is on so many other issues, it is striking how unified Americans are on ending our endless wars in the Middle East, prioritizing domestic concerns over foreign ones, and avoiding greater military engagement in conflicts overseas,” Will Ruger, vice president of research and policy at the Charles Koch Institute, said in a statement.
“After nearly 20 years of costly and often unnecessary military engagement abroad along with the current challenges facing our country at home, it is a positive sign that the American public increasingly want to see the United States pursue a more realistic foreign policy,” Ruger added.
Asked whether the United States should be more or less involved militarily in global conflicts, 48 per cent of respondents said engagement should decrease, while 32 per cent said the level of engagement should stay the same and seven per cent said it should increase. 50 per cent of Democrats surveyed said military engagement should decrease, compared to 40 per cent of Republicans.
The poll, which was weighted for gender, age, race, and education, has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.
