Just 47% of Americans approve of the U.S. intervention in Libya, the lowest level of support for an American military campaign in at least 30 years, according to a Gallup poll of adults nationwide released this week.
In addition, 37% of respondents said they disapproved of the military intervention in Libya.
This marks the first time that Gallup has not found a majority of Americans initially approving of a president’s use of military force in a foreign country, a data set that dates back to 1983, when President Reagan sent troops into Grenada.
A far smaller percentage of Americans support the current action in Libya than initially supported the Iraq War (76%) or the war in Afghanistan (90%). Both those campaigns are still ongoing.
Support for the current U.S. assault on Libya is also much lower than it was when Reagan launched airstrikes on that country in 1986, in response to a Libyan bombing of a German nightclub that killed two American soldiers. Seventy-one percent of Americans initially supported that campaign.
The Gallup poll was conducted March 21 among 1,010 adults nationwide. It has a margin of error of 4.0%.
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