Canadian Public Opinion Polls on Afghanistan

[couchcommander]

Anywho (Sabre1918... I hope it's not my tax dollars that are going to paying your salary),

I have to say that recently I have come very much to believe in the point that has been made on this thread in regards to the public lacking education about the Afghan mission, and this leading to opposition.

Just today, in speaking with several people, and bringing up the mission there, the initial response was negative in nature. The proceeding conversation was amusing, as one of them at first got Afghanistan and Iraq confused, and both thought we were there on a peacekeeping mission.

When asked as to why they didn't support the mission, the answers ranged from a shrug, to "it's not out type of thing"... ie the usual.

The interesting bit, and the bit that supports the actions of the Government and the CDF in trying to "sell", or more appropriately inform the Canadian public, was that when they were informed of what we are actually doing, opposition turned to support. And these are your usual left leaning university aged students.

The point that seemed to turn their opinion was actually our "3D" marketing campaign if you will.

When it was pointed out that due to the insurgency in Afghanistan, which was led by persons seeking to overthrow a democratically elected government, security was required in order to provide humanitarian assistance, which was indeed also part of the mission, opinions started turning.

As well, another effective point was that the Taliban (let us just group the insurgency together) is trying to bring about another rights abusing, tyrannical, murderous state, and these "combat" missions are to stop this.

In the end, my point, is that the message the government was trying to get out hasn't reached a significant portion of Canadians, and further, that this message should be tuned to highlight the "security to bring about stability and help deliver assistance" aspect of the mission.

And a question, are you guys still encountering many civilians that are uninformed about the mission? And further, what do you think can be done to help turn opinions?

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Couch-

In answer to your question-

are you guys still encountering many civilians that are uninformed about the mission? And further, what do you think can be done to help turn opinions?

I think that you have already answered the question.  It sounds like you did some outstanding work, just being polite, reasoned, logical and sticking to the facts.

I'm not sure that it is the CF's job to be shills for the Government (after all, the decison to be/or not to be in Afghanistan is a strictly political one), but I do think that each of us, in our capacity as citizens of this country, can do alot to help educate the public.  There are what, about 85,000 uniformed reg and Res force members in Canada?  If each of us corrected the misconceptions of just one person per week about what we are doing in Afghanistan (or just the purpose of the CF in general), that runs out to about 4.5 million Canadians opinions whose opinions are affected- in one year.  That ain't nothing...

 

[Teddy Ruxpin]

And a question, are you guys still encountering many civilians that are uninformed about the mission? And further, what do you think can be done to help turn opinions?

The level of disinformation and the number of downright fallacies being spouted is incredible.  For some reason, likely due to internal party politics, the Liberals tried to sell our previous deployment into Kabul with ISAF as a "peacekeeping" mission and this has created no end of confusion and has led to accusations that the underlying mission has changed over the past few months.

The reality is that ATHENA (the Kabul ISAF mission) wasn't all that much different than what the TF in Kandahar is doing right now.  ISAF exists (albeit under NATO rather than a Coalition) to support the Afghan government, including through the provision of military action if required.  When I was deployed with ATHENA, we undertook a number of highly successful "direct actions", some in concert with the Americans, that netted a variety of Taliban and HIG players.  The ATHENA ROE were very robust indeed (I cannot - and will not - comment on current ROE) and certainly bore no relation to the ill-conceived UN ROE of the bad old "peacekeeping" days.

There's a reason why Canadian soldiers serving on ATHENA never received the Peacekeeping Service Medal:  it wasn't a peacekeeping operation.  We have never conducted a peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

The problem stems from the fact that the Government, for its own reasons, sold the NATO side of operations in Afghanistan as "peacekeeping".  Indeed, even as I type, the CBC website is headlining the expansion of NATO "peacekeeping" to all of Afghanistan by August.  This misuse of terminology has allowed naysayers and the left to claim that our mission in Afghanistan has "changed", when nothing could be further from the truth.  The location and chain of command has changed, but the underlying mandate and raison d'etre certainly has not.  Nor will our presence revert to happy "peacekeeping" if we transfer to NATO command this summer.

In other words, I believe that the misinformation was part of a deliberate strategy here in Canada to soften our previous commitment in Kabul and to make it more palatable to the "peacekeeping" cheerleaders that are rife in Ottawa.  Now that our mission is being seen for what it really is (and always has been), suddenly questions are being asked.

Cheers,

Teddy

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Sounds like a good editorial piece to me.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Try as i might, I don't remember any media asking me what I think, but then I have a somewhat informed opinion and we know what they think of people with those.  :

 

[Journeyman]

Jack Granatstein has provided some interesting "sound bites" in a recent Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century publication.
http://www.ccs21.org/articles/granatstein/2006/jlg29mar06OnCasualties.pdf

I think the bottom line is, the Canadian Forces are at war while the Canadian public and government is not.

 

[zipperhead_cop]

That is an excellent article, Journeyman.  Probably one of the better ones that the media will not publish and allow the citizens to read. 

 

[couchcommander]

Heh, time to stir the pot *gets big stick*...

I am forced to wonder whether or not we are actually in a war. I mean by the traditional definition, of course not. There has been no formal declaration of war and we are not engaged in hostilities against another state.

Of course, a persuasive argument can made that a declaration of war is not necessary, in the modern day and age, in order for there to be a "war". This is a position I am inclined to accept. Hardly a person with at least the remotest sense of history would call the American involvement in Vietnam anything other than a "war" in all of it's glory and sadness.

Are we engaged on a "War on Terror"? In regards to this line of thinking I am skeptical. As much as the US Administration would like the world to believe, the Wars on Drugs, Illiteracy, Poverty, and other such nouns hardly qualify as "wars" such as the word has come to mean over the centuries.

What about a War in Afghanistan, a la America in Vietnam, of course minus all of the negative associations that such a connection would bring up? Of course, an argument can be made. Canadian troops, in cooperation with other states, are engaged in an active counter insurgency operation against a threat who seeks to strike us on home soil.

However, at what point does "involvement", in what could easily be called an internal Afghan affair (of course having repercussions elsewhere, but that is not much different from many other "internal" situations), turn into Canadian involvement in a "war"? If we only had a platoon of men, maybe a few advisers, would we consider it a war?

Indeed we have several thousand troops in Afghanistan. These troops have killed insurgents, and been killed by insurgents. We are risking the lives of some of the finest men and women in Canada for a cause thousands of kilometers away. Would it not be fitting, given this, and as was pointed out before, to at the very least say the Canadian Forces are at war, if not the entire county?

However, at the same time there has been no mass mobilization of industry on a wide scale. Equally damning to such a conclusion, there has been no mass mobilization of reserves, or even airpower. Can it be considered a war if the Nation, and even the Forces, are, as a whole, only putting forth a fraction of their capabilities? Vietnam saw conscription on a wide scale in the States, and the expenditure of massive amounts of resources.

What cannot be denied is that Canadians are engaged in combat. Men and women in Afghanistan are risking their lives, and loosing their lives, to crush an active insurgency, and to try and rebuild the nation. As for the question of whether we are at war, even a limited one; I'd have to leave that up to you at this point.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

You asked the question in the first paragraph:

I am forced to wonder whether or not we are actually in a war. I mean by the traditional definition, of course not. There has been no formal declaration of war and we are not engaged in hostilities against another state.

Proceeded to answer it, with the rest of your missive, up to the last sentence. Then reiterated your confusion, previously answered by yourself, in the last question.

What cannot be denied is that Canadians are engaged in combat. Men and women in Afghanistan are risking their lives, and loosing their lives, to crush an active insurgency, and to try and rebuild the nation. As for the question of whether we are at war, even a limited one; I'd have to leave that up to you at this point.

Quite possibly the most eloquent and thought out troll I've seen in some time, or the best reasoning for bi-polar medication that I can think of at this juncture.

 

[zipperhead_cop]

Quite possibly the most eloquent and thought out troll I've seen in some time, or the best reasoning for bi-polar medication that I can think of at this juncture.

Recceguy, you kill me

I think that the word "war" got pretty beat up in the 90's with is meaning a program that was "gonna get all serious".  And declared War, that doesn't seem to happen any more.  Thank God we got away from calling it a "policing action".  Makes my life easier. 
IMO calling Afghanistan a "war" is a way to continue to keep people from letting their minds and expectations from drifting back to "Peacekeeper" lala land.  War means shooting, dying and hurting on both sides. 
There is no need to ramp up some "war machine" because it is not needed yet.  Some might argue it may never be needed like it was in WW 1 and WW2, since precision arms is the standard now, and you don't have to throw 5000 bombs at one factory or bridge to get a job done. 
Let's keep it simple.  We have a war.  We will win a war.  The terrorists will sure to hell know they were in a war.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Technology, and skill, has replaced quantity, and manpower.

 

[gnplummer421]

The subject title states that the Canadian Public doesn't want our troops in A-stan. I just joined the "Globe and Mail" website's forums.The reason? Too many people slamming our mission, and I wanted a say. I seem to be outnumbered and need your help. If anyone can spare the time, please read the editorials and stories on the G and M website about our involvement in A-stan and help me "educate" the naysayers. By the way, I don't mind when someone has an opinion about our mission in A-stan, it just bothers me when the opinion is a misinformed one..shooting from the hip without a revolver sort of speak. 

Thanks for your help in advance

Gnplummer

 

[DG-41]

I wonder if the time hasn't come to take back the term "peacekeeping".

Peacekeeping, when it was first envisioned, didn't mean throwing unarmed and impotent soldiers between belligerents. Instead, it was intended that the UN organize task forces made up of troops supplied by member nations who could intervene in conflicts when it was right to do so.

As I recall, Pearson argued long and hard for the UN to maintain a standing rapid reaction force that could go into trouble spots and impose a peace if need be. His primary opposition was the Americans, although I can't remember if the American opposition was due to a desire keep their forces free of UN control (so they could invade or not as they saw fit) or due to the once-traditional American reluctance to serve as the global police force.

One could make the case that the mission in Afghanistan is a *properly conducted* "peacekeeping" mission, as the concept had originally been intended.

DG

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Peacekeeping denotes the United Nations. The UN is nothing but a bureaucratic, corrupt & impotent shell of the organization it's supposed to be. As long as the two terms are tied together, they diminish the importance and impact of the other. Another term has to be coined to indicate the task 'Peacekeeping' was supposed to do and distance it from the self righteous gangsters. It also has to be redefined, we don't do 'peacekeeping'. We do 'war' including all it's permutations and tentacled tasks.

 

[Journeyman]

Quite possibly the most eloquent and thought out troll I've seen in some time, or the best reasoning for bi-polar medication that I can think of at this juncture.

Definitely rates amongst the top-10 one-liners to date.  ;D

 

[William Webb Ellis]

One of the points that has been touched on is education (Gnplummer).  When I came back from Yugo in the early 90's I remember being in a university class on international peace and conflict resolution.  My "classmates" could not understand why you would need things like TOW, or M113s on a peacekeeping mission. They also had no idea that soldiers died on these missions. They were also dumbfounded that the locals may not have wanted the peacekeeper around, and were confrontational.

I guess my poorly thought out point is there needs to be a better "PR" job by the CF.  I know the last gov't went across Canada on the "here comes the body bags" tour, but no one either understood or believed it was the case.  I was very proud to read the quotes from Hillier the the CF's job was to kill people, amongst other things.  I think the public chooses to forget this fact.  I know my wife (whom I did not know at  when I was in) can't get her head around me being willing to kill if situation arose.

One final point on Sabre1918, historically Canadians have produced soldiers that are extremely capable of killing.  When the Canadian army moved through Holland didn't they face a seasoned German army, one that had spent time on the Russian front.  As my knowledge of history is slim to none with slim having left town, I will not comment further.

Please be kind as I am still a FNG poster

 

[couchcommander]

Troll! !

Meant to inspire discussion, more like it. This seems to be an unresolved thought (or not?).

The reason i did not answer my own question, is that I don't know the answer, at this point, and would like some input from you fellows as to what you think. I think I did forget the question mark in that opening line though...me go to university for edumacation, what can I say?

However, thank for you calling it eloquent, I'm touched  :'(. As well, I think you mean dissociative identity disorder, rather than bi-polar (unless you're calling me a manic depressive??... the back and forth reasoning is meant to show that there are many varying viewpoints in this... once again an attempt to inspire discussion).

But !!! Not a troll!

 

[couchcommander]

Technology, and skill, has replaced quantity, and manpower.

Anywho,

Sure, good enough. However, as one of my rambling questions asked, then at what point does a "minor conflict" or a local isolated action turn into a war?

 

[zipperhead_cop]

Anywho,

Sure, good enough. However, as one of my rambling questions asked, then at what point does a "minor conflict" or a local isolated action turn into a war?

Does it really matter?  I don't think Afghanistan qualifies as a "minor conflict".  IMO I still think they are just labels that the media uses.  Maybe one of the historians has a bona fide definition of what actually constitutes war.

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

http://www.winnipegsun.com/Comment/Editorial/2006/03/19/1494880.html

Let troops get on with mission

On the evening of Nov. 15, 2005 -- just four months ago -- at the urging of then-defence minister Bill Graham, Parliament held a debate over Canada's military mission in Afghanistan.

That would be the current mission, by the way -- the dangerous one in Kandahar that some opposition MPs and pundits are demanding that Parliament must debate.

We'll forgive Sun readers for not remembering the November debate since it's obvious that no one else does. Certainly not the MPs currently calling for another one nor the pundits in the parliamentary press gallery who can't be bothered to cover anything more than question period and scrums.

Indeed, as Sun columnist Paul Stanway noted this week, when Parliament held its debate, only a handful of MPs managed to show up.

Just because nobody paid any attention to the debate, however, doesn't mean it didn't happen. And reading over the transcripts in Hansard -- the official record of Parliament -- makes the current calls for another debate on the Afghanistan mission even more hypocritical.

For starters, none of the participants in the debate that night were under the illusion that this was an ordinary peacekeeping mission. Conservative MP Rick Casson said that the mission was "damn dangerous" and that there was a high possibility of Canadian casualties.

Then-foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew acknowledged the risks, said that the government wasn't putting the troops in danger in any unnecessary way and added, "I don't think Gen. (Rick) Hillier would have accepted any such risk either if he had not been confident that we were taking the appropriate actions before sending our Canadian soldiers there."

Tory MP Leon Benoit asked why the government changed the mission and moved the troops to the more dangerous Kandahar area, saying that the government "has not given the most basic explanation to Parliament and to the Canadian public as to why" the change was made.

"I want to reassure the member that this is the reason why we are having this debate tonight," responded Pettigrew.

Winnipeg NDP MP Bill Blaikie also raised that point, saying that he did not think that the government had been "fully up-front" with Canadians about the differences between the old Canadian mission in Kabul and the new one in Kandahar -- a mission Blakie termed "certainly not peacekeeping ... more like war fighting."

Graham responded, "It is clear that it is not a peacekeeping mission of the Cyprus type ... we have to be prepared to fight ...."

Later, during a speech in which Graham spelled out in greater detail the role of Canadian troops in Kandahar, he again acknowledged that the mission is "as other members have pointed out, a complex, challenging and dangerous environment and mission as the part we are going to in Afghanistan is the most unstable and dangerous in the country."

Added Graham, "Members can be assured our troops are exceptionally well-trained, equipped and led for this mission."

Obviously, we can't cover the entire debate in such a limited space. The MPs talked about the length of the Afghanistan commitment, landmines, prisoners of war, the role of NGOs and a number of other related topics during the course of the evening.

But it was abundantly clear from reading through the debate that MPs had lots of questions to ask, and they were getting answers. Unlike the theatre of question period, this debate had a lot of substance to it.

To sum it up, then, Parliament has already debated the new, dangerous mission in Kandahar. It was done at the request of the Liberals, and had participants from all political parties -- even if only a few MPs could be bothered to show up.

Sixteen weeks later, no one can seriously argue that the mission has changed to such a significant degree, or that our soldiers are in much greater danger now than they were in mid-November, as to warrant another parliamentary debate.

So let's end the shameless political grandstanding and let the troops get on with their mission.

And any politician or pundit who wants to revisit the Afghanistan debate should feel free to read Hansard.