Washington braced for massive anti-Afghan protest

57 percent of Americans now oppose the US war effort in Afghanistan, according to a new poll conducted by CNN and the Opinion Research Corporation.

That anger is being turned into protests, with an increasing number of anti-war campaigners taking to the streets.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden and the US government are devising a new strategy for Afghanistan. Whether to add more troops and whether to focus on counter-insurgency or counter-terrorism is being discussed.

Many anti-war organizations are planning protests for October 7, which marks the start of the ninth year that US troops are stationed in Afghanistan. Their message is simple: get US troops out of Afghanistan.

Obama maintains that removing the US presence from Afghanistan will completely destabilize the country and make it a haven for Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

Sarah Sloan from the Answer Coalition thinks that while these arguments caused the US public to originally support action in Afghanistan, unlike in Iraq, times have since changed.

“We’ve seen now that even through there were no Afghans on the planes on 9/11, just as there were no Iraqis, there were unknown thousands of Afghans who have been killedm,” Sloan said.