In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, the U.S. military commander atop international forces in Afghanistan said U.S. forces would not be leaving the war-torn Central Asian country any time soon. The comments by Gen. John Allen, who took command of the International Security Assistance Force [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, the U.S. military commander atop international forces in Afghanistan said U.S. forces would not be leaving the war-torn Central Asian country any time soon. The comments by Gen. John Allen, who took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) when Gen. David Petraeus stepped down to take the helm of the C.I.A. in July, fall in line with other U.S. and international officials since President Obama announced in June that a complete transition to Afghan security responsibility would take place by the end of 2014.

CBS’s Scott Pelley asked Gen. Allen what his plan for Afghanistan was:

ALLEN: Well the plan is to – is to win. The plan is to be successful and the United States is gonna be here for some period of time.

PELLEY: …You’re talking about U.S. forces being here after 2014?

ALLEN: Yes, there will be.

PELLY: …Are we talking about fighting forces?

ALLEN: We’re talking about forces that will provide an advisory capacity. And we may even have some form of counter-terrorism force here to continue the process of developing the Afghan’s counter-terrorism capabilities. But, if necessary, respond ourselves.

PELLEY: But what you’re saying is that the United States isn’t leaving Afghanistan in the foreseeable future?

ALLEN: Well that’s an important message.

Watch the video here:

As for specific numbers of U.S. forces that will remain, Allen said it was “too early to tell.”

Also in the 60 Minutes segment, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, in response to a direct question form Pelley, offered a veiled acknoweldgement that the U.S. was talking to at least some factions of the Taliban-led insurgency: “[W]e talk to the whole range of people, anyone who will talk to us. You can draw your own conclusions.”

Allen recounted a recent episode where he’d gone to Pakistan to ask the top military commander there, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to help stop a truck bomb that U.S. intelligence indicated was travelling from Pakistan to Afghanistan to target U.S. troops. “We think it ultimately exploded against the outer wall of one of our combat outposts,” said Allen. “Seventy-seven [Americans] were wounded that day.”

CBS News conducted a phone survey of 906 randomly selected participants in September, asking for the first [...]]]> A new poll by 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair shows that Americans are very hesitant to go to war with Iran — with a quarter of respondents saying that “nothing” could make them “support a war with Iran.”

CBS News conducted a phone survey of 906 randomly selected participants in September, asking for the first question, “What would cause you to support a war with Iran?”

Laura Rozen at Politico sums up the answers:

25% of respondents said “only if Iran attacks U.S. soil;” 25% said “If Iran attacks the U.S. fleet in the Persian Gulf;” 11% said “If Iran tests a nuclear bomb;” and 10% said “If Iran attacks Israel.” 24% of respondents said they would never support a war with Iran.

While half of respondents said that they would support a war if Iran directly attacked United States ships or soil, only one in ten said they’d be willing to jump into a war if Iran attacked Israel.

Only 11 percent of respondents said they would support war if Iran tested a nuclear bomb. One might interpret this to mean most Americans would support a containment policy against Iran rather than attack as a “last resort” to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed state. Top military officials themselves acknowledge such “military option” is fraught with potentially devastating consequences.

And Matt Duss at Think Progress has an interesting observation about the phrasing of the question and how the hawks are surely paying attention:

It’s an oddly phrased question, but one which nevertheless indicates pretty strongly that Americans are not in favor of a U.S. war with Iran. I suspect that those who are in favor of a war with Iran understand this, which is why they like to talk exclusively about “air strikes,” “military strikes,” or my favorite, “surgical strikes.”

These results track with a Chicago Council poll last month, which we covered here at LobeLog:

Most striking (no pun intended) was that only 18 percent of respondents think the U.S. should launch a military strike on Iranian nuclear targets now. Even if diplomacy and sanctions fail to stop Iranian advancement toward a bomb, a slim plurality still think the U.S. should not bomb Iran (49 percent oppose it, 47 would support it). More than half of respondents say  if Israel starts a war with Iran, the U.S. should not leap to Israel’s defense.

Vanity Fair‘s website also had a chart breaking down the poll by political affiliation. Here’s a screen grab:

With poll results such as these, it appears the efforts of Iran war hawks to rile up the U.S. populace for another Mid East war may not fly. Or, they may just choose to ignore the statistics and continue to falsely portray American public opinion as being on their side: Cliff May, when he appeared on MSNBC, said that “happily most Americans watching Ahmadinejad on TV understand” the threat posed by a nuclear Iran. Turns out what they might understand  - and what they may want the United States to do – may be two very different things.