Gallup: 72% of Americans favor Obama Afghanistan drawdown plan

President Barack Obama has unusually broad public support for his decision to begin drawing down U.S. forces from Afghanistan, according to a new Gallup poll.

Almost three in four Americans (72 percent) are in favor of Obama's decision to start bringing troops home from Afghanistan, while just one in four (23 percent) oppose it, the new Gallup poll, conducted June 23-25, found.

Obama announced last week that 33,000 U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan by September 2012, some 10,000 of them by the end of this year. The remaining 68,000 U.S. forces will leave by 2014.

The Gallup poll found that while the broad outline of the decision has wide public support, there is less consensus on whether the U.S. is removing forces fast enough and on the precise details. Still, 43 percent of those polled think Obama got the number of troops to be withdrawn about right, while one in three (29 percent) called the number of troops to be withdrawn "too low," and a mere one in five (19 percent) called the number too high.

The poll's findings come as a new United Nations report says there has been a 20 percent rise in Afghan civilian casualties this year compared with 2010, mostly attributed to Taliban insurgents, suicide bombers and improved explosive devices. The increase in civilian deaths has occurred as the United States had deployed some 100,000 U.S. troops in the country in the wake of the Obama administration's 2009 troop surge.

"Violence in Afghanistan, led by Taliban suicide attacks and assassinations, increased by 51 percent in the past three months compared with the same period in 2010, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said," Bloomberg News' Bill Varner reported Wednesday.

"Ban said the UN documented 2,950 civilian casualties in the past three months, a 20 percent increase over the same 2010 period that includes 1,090 deaths and 1,860 injuries," Varner continued. "Anti- government forces were linked to 80 percent of the casualties and Afghan, U.S. and allied military actions caused 10 percent, the report said. The other 10 percent could not be attributed to either side."