WASHINGTON: As the year of withdrawal begins, a majority in America wants the US president to pull out his troops from Afghanistan even before the December 2014 deadline, shows a national survey released on Monday.

And for the first time in 12 years, support for the US-led war dipped to below 20 per cent, vindicating President Barack Obama’s stand that now is the time to quit Afghanistan.

While 82pc told a CNN/ORC International survey that they were against the war only 17pc said they still supported it. One per cent had no opinion. This makes America’s longest military conflict, which entered its 13th year in October, also its most unpopular. In a similar survey conducted in 2008, 52pc supported the war while 46pc opposed it. Two per cent had no opinion.

In Monday’s survey, more than 50pc said US troops should leave Afghanistan earlier than December 2014. Only a quarter said that America should still have boots on the ground in Afghanistan after the deadline.

Fifty-seven pc said the conflict was going badly for the US and only a third said America was winning the war in Afghanistan.

“Those numbers show the war in Afghanistan with far less support than other conflicts,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Opposition to the Iraq war never got higher than 69pc in CNN polling while US troops were in that country, and while the Vietnam War was in progress, no more than six in 10 ever told Gallup’s interviewers that war was a mistake.”

President Obama plans to pull out most of his combat troops from Afghanistan by December 2014, leaving a behind a smaller but effective force to help the Afghan government.

Mr Holland said that people with no party affiliation have “a gloomier view” of the war in Afghanistan than Republicans or Democrats. Perhaps, because a Republican president started the war and a Democratic president has continued it, he added.

The surveyors noted that so far some 2,300 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan since the war began in the autumn of 2001. They also pointed out that if a bilateral security agreement that would keep up to 10,000 US troops in Afghanistan after the end of 2014 was signed soon, the US could withdraw all forces from Afghanistan at the end of next year.

The poll was conducted for CNN by ORC International between December 16 and 19, with 1,035 adults nationwide questioned by telephone. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

Two other US national surveys conducted earlier this month also showed similar results. Two-thirds of those questioned in an ABC News/Washington Post poll said the war has not been worth fighting, and an Associated Press/GfK survey showed 57pc saying the US did the wrong thing in going to war in Afghanistan.