But hey, what does public opinion count in a war for democracy?

By Seumas Milne, The Guardian

From the way official Britain pontificates about the war in Afghanistan, you'd never know that most British people want troops withdrawn by the end of the year and only a minority have supported the US-led campaign for years.

The BBC in particular seems to have almost entirely abandoned any attempt at neutral reporting of what is actually going on. Instead, its newsreaders and presenters sternly warn that "Britain's resolve is being put to the test" and speculate, surreally, about what might happen if public "support" for the war "were to weaken" (last Friday's 10 o'clock TV news and Newsnight programmes).

In the circumstances, it would hardly be surprising if public opinion had been turned after what has been a barrage of state war propaganda, as embedded Kiplingesque reporting from the Helmand frontline, military parades and a new Armed Services Day have been used to try and translate sympathy for British troops into support for foreign wars.

But it hasn't happened. Today's ICM poll for the Guardian and the BBC's Newsnight shows 56% want all British troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year, and 60% by 2011, against 36% who want them to stay until "they are no longer needed".

That was interpreted by the Guardian's headline writer today as "public support for war is firm, despite deaths" – on the assumption that the sharp increase in British casualties might have been expected to trigger a further drop in public backing for the eight-year-old Afghan occupation, and because opposition to the war had fallen from 2006.

But given the media's increasingly intense emotional focus on British soldiers' deaths during the current offensive – today's Daily Mirror leads on last Friday's fallen "band of brothers" and the Sun on Gordon Brown's "this war is our patriotic duty" – I would have expected the opposite. In fact, the only time there was majority support in Britain for the Iraq war was during the initial months of attack and occupation, when British troops were seen to be in action and in greatest danger.

But, even if support for withdrawal is slightly down from last November's 68%, 62% still believe British forces are either making no difference in Afghanistan worse or making it worse – and 47%, against 46%, say they oppose the "British military operation" outright. And interestingly, given what New Labour used to claim about social attitudes to the Iraq war, some of the strongest opposition to the war comes from working class people.

Of course, British public hostility towards the Afghanistan occupation is mirrored in most countries in the world (in the US it is pretty evenly divided). Even in Afghanistan itself, where polling under conditions of foreign military occupation would be expected to be skewed towards the occupier, a recent BBC-sponsored poll in February found a majority saying they want foreign troops withdrawn within one to two years and negotiations with the Taliban (pdf).

But, hey, what does public opinion in either country count in a war for democracy?

See also: