Canadian Public Opinion Polls on Afghanistan

[MarkOttawa]

Edward Campbell: Great stuff.  And if Mr Siddiqui thinks we went to Kabul in 2001...Does the Star do no fact checking?  Need I ask?  It's all about attitude, dude.  Our media are, as you say, stenographers for a certain point of view.

A relevant post at "The Torch":

"Afstan update: about four months late" (March 25)
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2006/03/afstan-update-about-four-months-late.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Navy_Blue]

Lets see who can answer this right...Who (meaning which country) participated in the first Peace keeping Operation ever??  Ask some civis and see what they say.  8)

"opportunity for Canada to get back to its trademark United Nations peacekeeping role."

Someone needs to do some history classes.

 

[Centurian1985]

I'll try to avoid comments already made by teddy...

Shift some troops from Afghan mission to Darfur
Getting engaged in Sudan would help us return to our historic, moral role, says Haroon Siddiqui
May 7, 2006. 01:00 AM
HAROON SIDDIQUI

T he peace agreement in Darfur opens up an opportunity for Canada to get back to its trademark United Nations peacekeeping role and ease its way out of the ill-advised U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
There is no opportunity for peacekeeping in Sudan anywhere in Sudan without a willingness by the agressors to cease hostile actions...which they have no indication they are willing  to do....

Our initial deployment in Kabul in 2001 involved peacemaking. Our troops secured the city with force and tact, using little of the former but a lot of the latter, winning kudos worldwide.
Sorry I have to comment on this...2001? This person is obviously mistaken in his facts thereby prejudicing the crdibility of the rest of the information in the piece...  

But without telling Canadians the whole truth, Gen. Rick Hillier and the Paul Martin Liberals committed our troops in Kandahar to U.S. command and also the failed U.S. war on terrorism.
Quite the oppositie, I believe Mr.Martin and Gen. Hillier have been a couple of the most outspoken public figures we have ever had! I wish more of their predecessors had been as bold!

By most accounts, the Taliban are all over the south in greater numbers than at any time since they were toppled and are ambushing foreign troops and terrorizing the local population.
Opinion...

Foreign soldiers and their Afghan helpers may rule by day but it is the Taliban writ that runs at night, with the civilians caught in-between, pressed for "intelligence" by one side and squeezed for food, money and protection by the other.
Propoganda...

This is the archetypal nightmare scenario of societies under siege, like Chechnya and Vietnam. We need to get out of it, not because it is dangerous but because it is of dubious value.
PC answer - On this I agree it is of dubious value, but it is a noble and righteous venture, being committed to a goal of a stable Afghanistan.  

If the U.S. tactics were going to work, they would have by now.
No comment....

Osama bin Laden would have been killed or caught and we would not still be reading the tea leaves in his taped messages.
Completely inaccurate - no cups of tea were in any of the taps I know of.  The writer makes a  common journalistic error; you can write satire or you can write facts, but never do both in the saem article or you discredit yourself!

Afghans would have known security and been hugging the Americans, not hating them.
A popular propoganda technique; state what could have been to make it appear that a failure has occurred.  

The land would have been bearing fruit, not poppies.
I would like to know how this could have come about!  To get rid of the popy trade you have to get rid of the Pakistani elements who are paying gold for this product.  This will take years to do. Plus, very little of the land is suitable for planting fruit trees...

Fortunately, most of the Americans are to depart soon — to, where else? Iraq — and our Afghan operations are to come under the NATO umbrella, under British command. The rules of engagement may improve.
See Teddy...

Our commitment ends in February. Instead of extending it, as Stephen Harper and Hillier want, we should plan to move half, if not all, our troops to Sudan, depending on the effectiveness of our Afghan operation.
What the hell for?  The writer fails to outline the benefits of such a move.

Such redeployment would please George W. Bush, given his passion for Darfur. It would also be the right thing to do.
False information, more propoganda...

Both Martin and Harper have dodged this pressing moral issue. Canada did contribute humanitarian aid and some logistical support for the African Union's peace force in Darfur. Our envoy to the United Nations, Allan Rock, has been part of the peace talks. But, overall, Ottawa has been peripatetic.
Not true, Canada has been one of the leading proponents of help to Darfur but is realistic enough to know that they cant do it themselves or with the current government hostile against any intruding forces.  Thus, more propoganda

The horrors of Darfur are stamped on our conscience:

In 2003, rebel groups attacked government targets to protest widespread neglect of and discrimination against the inhabitants of the arid region. Khartoum unleashed its proxy militia, which went on a rampage of arson, looting, rape and murder.
Completely inaccurate.  The militia attacks supported by the government occurred much earlier.

About 180,000 people were killed and 2 million displaced.
At least he got that part right...

The intra-Muslim conflict has been portrayed as one between Arabs and non-Arabs. It is, but only in part, as the earlier one in the south was not just about Muslims and non-Muslims.

Ethnicity and religion are but two of many fault lines that have plagued Sudan since independence from the British in 1954.

The real conflict is between an authoritative central government, rich on oil revenues, and the remote regions that remain ignored and poor, leaving the people to, first, fight among themselves over the meagre resources and, then, the federal government.

Until that imbalance is corrected, no patched-up peace agreement, as welcome as it is, can lead to a lasting solution any more than the 2005 peace deal with the south has.

Canada can play a role in guiding Sudan toward a democratic and decentralized federation.
What role? What is the purpose of the writers tirade? Does he approve or disapprove of the Sudan government actions? He never states it explicitly.  If the Sudan government is merely responding to rebel attacks, as the writer suggests, then why are we needed?

As a start, Senator RomeóDallaire, former commander of the ill-fated UN mission in Rwanda, suggests that Canada help translate the peace deal into a strong Security Council mandate for a peacekeeping force, with the power to penalize Khartoum if it does not fulfil its promises to Darfur.
Why does he cast Dallaire as a failed commander if Dallaire has the right opinion? Why was the UN Rwanada mission ill-fated? Did everyone know it would fail before it started? Security Council deal likelihood as already been covered, unsuccessfull, choice ditto with economic sanctions - you cant make punitive economic sanctions on a nation whose majority of funds are blackmarket activities that are unaffected by the WMF and other institutions.

Getting engaged in Sudan on those twin fronts would help us return to our historic role and also rediscover our moral core.
The ultimate military disaster - missions on two fronts! Thank you Haroon Clauswitz...

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146865815526&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

It is this kind of irresponsible journalistic efforts which discredit the entire profession...

 

[MarkOttawa]

Navy_Blue: Would they be?

UNTSO
http://www.forces.gc.ca/hr/dhh/honours_awards/engraph/honour_awards_e.asp?cat=3&Q_ID=38

UNMOGIP
http://www.forces.gc.ca/hr/dhh/honours_awards/engraph/honour_awards_e.asp?cat=3&Q_ID=40

Mark (a civie)
Ottawa

 

[Scoobie Newbie]

Darfur sounds like Somilia all over again.   Could someone take Jake Layton oversea's and try to open his eyes.  Peace with superiour fire power.

 

[mainerjohnthomas]

I'll cross post a copy of a letter to the editor of the Vancouver Province in response to the 8 May 2006 article outlining Jack Layton's brilliant NDP plan to get us out of a winnable Afghanistan, and into Darfur.  I had family with Gordon in Khartom, this plan sounds familiar........ 
Quote:
    I am amazed that Jack Layton and the NDP think that we should not have our troops in Afghanistan, whose leaders and ambassadors have lobbied hard for continued and increased Canadian troop commitments, and where our troops are removing a proven threat to the security of North America (the Taliban).  In return, Mr Layton would have us send troops with the UN to Sudan, whose leaders have promised to turn it into a graveyard for foreign troops.  Mr Layton wants us to return to the lightly armed, thinly deployed blue berets we used to deploy to separate two stable warring nation states that now desired peace.  This is not the case in the Sudan, and the price of Mr Layton's fantasies can be seen in the UN mission to Rwanda.  Prevention of genocide by those willing to kill whomever gets in the way requires a proactive mandate, and the warfighting tactics that NATO has employed with success in Afghanistan, not the tactics of the disastrous UN efforts in failed African states.
                    John Mainer, Cpl (ret) Canadian Armed Forces
                    Maple Ridge
End Quote

 

[Edward Campbell]

Navy_Blue: Would they be?

UNTSO
http://www.forces.gc.ca/hr/dhh/honours_awards/engraph/honour_awards_e.asp?cat=3&Q_ID=38

UNMOGIP
http://www.forces.gc.ca/hr/dhh/honours_awards/engraph/honour_awards_e.asp?cat=3&Q_ID=40

Mark (a civie)
Ottawa

1948!?! 1949?!?  But that cannot be; that's before Lester Pearson invented peacekeeping!

This is X Files level stuff 'cause Joe Clark said (today's Grope and Flail) that Mike Pearson invented UN Peacekeeping in 1956.  Joe can't be wrong, can he?  Not him and Haroon Siddiqui, too?  Say it isn't so!

What will we tell the children?

What's next?  Was Saint Pierre Trudeau a puny, pompous, provincial, puffed-up, pseudo-intellectual poltroon?

 

[MarkOttawa]

Edward Campbell: Actually, as I'm sure you know, PET was a fascist.
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Byfield_Link/2006/04/14/1534057.html

UNEF was in fact the first  "peacekeeping" as opposed to "observation" mission.  Fat lot of good it did, since Nasser ordered it out in 1967 (a fact proponents of "traditional peackeeping" never mention or do not know), which resulted in the Six Day's War.  Peacekeeping rules.  Not.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Britney Spears]

Meh, I'd go.

Just as long as there's still a war going on after Layton pulls the tanks, heavy air lift, attack helicopters, transport helicopters, their operators and all the other kit we would need out of his ass.

 

[paracowboy]

Meh, I'd go.

Just as long as there's still a war going on after Layton pulls the tanks, heavy air lift, attack helicopters, transport helicopters, their operators and all the other kit we would need out of his ***.

dude, I spewed my double-double. My wife is ticked.

It was worth it.

 

[Britney Spears]

It's always like this. I tell a joke and everyone get's all offended and politically correct and whiney. I say something serious (like above) and everyone laughs at me. I guess it's kind of like how I get better PDRs if I showed up for work drunk every morning. 

 

[TCBF]

"...after Layton pulls the tanks, heavy air lift, attack helicopters, transport helicopters, their operators and all the other kit we would need out of his ***."

Is it big enough?

"can show you proof ......rational proof......but you have to be willing to listen....."

- We have serious attention span issues.  Do you own any Latex clothing?

"What will we tell the children?"

- Tell them that we knew all along that Afghanistan mattered and Darfur did not.  Tell them that their fathers who died in Darfur died in a continent that could drop 3000 feet under water tomorrow and the rest of the world would still unfold as it should.  Sad, but true.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

artsy,

Spam the site one more time with that amount of drivel and your gone.

 

[Michael OLeary]

artsy and fans - go here - http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/43047.0.html

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Globe and Mail continues its efforts to undercut the Afstan mission: "Liberals ponder role in Afghanistan"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060508.LIBERALS08/TPStory/National

This is the third paragraph of the story about a meeting of Ontario Liberals attended by all eleven federal leadership candidates:

"Comments and speeches by the candidates and interim leader Bill Graham focused on the environment, aboriginals, social justice, foreign aid and longer-term economic issues. Canada's Afghanistan mission, despite being one of the main political issues at the federal level, was barely mentioned."

The first paragraph, however, states:

"Canada's military mission in Afghanistan is shaping up to be the most sensitive issue in the Liberal leadership campaign, as public support declines for the mission originally launched when the party was in power."

The two paragraphs directly contradict each other. One cannot but suspect that the Globe and Mail is deliberately trying to sow doubt about the Afghanistan mission. That would be fine on the editorial page; it is not fine when it leads to clearly distorted news reporting.

Mark
Ottawa

This is from this morning’s Globe and Mail and is reproduced here under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

I am not spamming but I am posting this in two threads: here and in Politics in Liberal Leadership.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060509.wxmacgregor09/BNStory/National/home

Souring on Afghanistan will leave Liberal hopefuls anxiously testing the wind

ROY MacGREGOR

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

It is the simplest rule in both politics and column writing.

Wet a finger and hold it up.

Politicians go with the wind; columnists go against it.

In politics, the notion that a leader must chase the people has been attributed to so many -- French revolutionaries, various British prime ministers including Canadian-born Andrew Bonar Law -- that no one can really claim ownership.

Which, of course, leaves it wide open for any one of the 11 (and counting) candidates for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.

The Liberal 11 gathered this past weekend in the ballroom of the Sheraton Centre in Toronto and underlined, once again, why Canadians are increasingly seeing this as a regional party of very little imagination.

When those who had come to listen shouted out "Shame!" it was not, as might be expected, to express their disenchantment with the current government's increasingly American way of looking at things or even the government's dismal showing on protecting the environment.

No, they called out "Shame!" to show how they felt when Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a Conservative, came to Toronto to say hello to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, a Liberal, and then hurried off to a dinner to introduce provincial Conservative Leader John Tory as "the next premier of Ontario."

Strange, isn't it, that such people would show up at a political gathering knowing absolutely nothing about politics . . .

But so be it. The Liberals are caught up these days in finding their feet, not their hands. And any leadership candidate wetting a finger would be just as likely to stick it in his or her own ear as any prevailing wind.

But what is most curious about this weekend gathering is that the likely issue of the coming seven months before the leadership convention was barely even broached.

One candidate, Michael Ignatieff -- the only identifiable hawk in this flock of rare birds -- did mention Afghanistan, but essentially to embrace the position Stephen Harper has already staked out with his Canadians don't "cut-and-run" talk.

Canada, Ignatieff said, is a country that "does the tough lifting when it has to be done." This is something Canadians take great pride in -- being there when it matters -- but the growing issue concerns the phrase "when it has to be done."

We're increasingly not so sure. Canada, it appears, is already well into that grey area so much of the United States is entering with Iraq -- support the troops, question the war -- and the reality of 16 Canadian deaths in that difficult country is only beginning to have its effect on the population at large.

Last week in tiny Erin, Ont., when the urn holding the ashes of Lieutenant William Turner was buried in the same grave that holds his father, a few locals opened up to the Guelph Mercury with some rather telling comments.

Jack Grey, who lives next door to the Legion Hall where the young soldier was remembered, said the decision to be in Afghanistan was the real "shame" here.

And Doug Richardson, a man who fits the very demographic that should be firmest in support -- 66 years old, heartland Ontario -- declared categorically: "Those boys should not be there. They didn't know what they're getting into, and now they're getting knocked off like flies.

"This is getting serious."

Very serious indeed. Others, of course, hold quite the opposite view, and deserve respect for those beliefs, but the fact that opinion is now so clearly split should be of particular note for those who would, as Bonar Law once said, hurry after the people in order to be their leader.

Last week's Strategic Counsel poll found 54 per cent of Canadians oppose or strongly oppose Canada's "peacemaking" role in Afghanistan, well up from two months previous. And support is softest in -- again no surprise -- Quebec, traditional base of Liberal support in this confusing country.

Canadians gave 116,000 lives to just cause in the last century. "You will not die but step into immortality," Sir Arthur Currie told his men before the Battle of the Somme. "Your mothers will not lament your fate but will be proud to have borne such sons. Your names will be revered forever and forever by your grateful country, and God will take you onto Himself."

There is still pride, great pride, but mothers and others do lament, greatly, and all the more so when it feels as immediate as these recent deaths in a war that is simply not seen as clear and certain as that first great one.

If, as military sources have quietly been telling those who cover such situations, this taming of Afghanistan -- something that has already eluded Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British Empire and the Soviet Union -- will soon get even messier, those polling numbers could shift even more dramatically than they already have.

If the people begin to move, what will the Liberal 11 do?

Who among them will be first to wet a finger?
rmacgregor@globeandmail.com

 

[MarkOttawa]

Why is this story not front page on the Globe or Star?  Or a lead item on CBC or CTV?

"Canadians back Afghan mission despite deaths-poll"
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/12052006/6/n-canada-canadians-afghan-mission-despite-deaths-poll.html

'Fri May 12, 11:33 AM EST

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Support among Canadians for the country's military mission in Afghanistan has slipped but is still relatively solid despite a rash of recent military casualties, according to a new poll on Friday.

The Ekos survey -- provided to Reuters -- shows 62 percent of Canadians support the mission in Afghanistan, down from 70 percent in early February. The number opposed grew to 37 percent from 28 percent.

Canada has 2,300 troops based in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Four soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb on April 22, bringing to 16 the number of Canadians who have died in Afghanistan since the September 11 attacks.

The troops are due back next February and the new Conservative government is under increasing pressure to outline whether it will extend the mission.

"In some ways, what is most remarkable here is how robust support for the mission has proven to be," said Ekos President Frank Graves.

"After all, for the first time in many years, Canadians are seeing significant casualties among their armed forces," he said in a statement.

The Ekos poll of 1,013 people was carried out between April 20 and 27 and is considered accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.'

It was, however, carried in the Gulf Times; go figure:
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=86288&version=1&template_id=43&parent_id=19

Mark
Ottawa

 

[George Wallace]

Why is this story not front page on the Globe or Star?  Or a lead item on CBC or CTV?

Rather simple really.  It would prove all their previous sensationalist Headlines to be false.  They would then have to waste space in their rag to print retractions.  It is easier to print the story, and hide it in the back pages.  That way, if someone like you found it and asked, they can reply that they did print it and no retraction is required.  Rather sly on their part, don't you think?

 

[MarkOttawa]

George Wallace: As far as I can find from Google And Yahoo news searches non/no Canadian media have picked up the story at all.  Nothing from Canoe.ca or Canada.com either.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[zipperhead_cop]

Why do all these clowns keep referring to all of the previous thrusts into A'stan when they talk about our mission?  Can't the CDS get up and just say "we are not there to conquer or tame this place, you jag offs!  We are trying to help them help themselves".  I was particularly enraged to hear LIBERAL SENATOR Romeo Daillaire's comments to support the thinly veiled attempt at the Sudan distraction.  What a pathetic, disloyal, partisan prick.  To fully know what is at stake, and use his influence as a previous military member to help lick up to his Lieberal string pullers makes me sick.  :threat:

 

[gaspasser]

Thanks Armymedic, that puts our mission there in perspective.  I had an interesting conversation (read arguement) recently with my mother who does not support our mission in Afghanistan, albeit she does support our Troops.  Maybe she (and others who don't support certain freedoms) needs to read your words because she is a great supporter of Women's Rights. Your post makes a great arguement for both. 
Cheers and Nulli Secundus