http://smallwarsjournal.com/events/tew/

Read it, and weep.

I have to admit, though, I am amazed by this sub-species of cretin that comes here thinking that it is my duty to be a patriot for their country. They seem to be shocked by the fact that there is a world of non-Americans that views their state’s actions critically, or that refuses to partake in their paranoid Islamophobic hatred and acknowledges the reality that the U.S. is by very far a greater threat to world peace than any minor little, underwear-burning “Al Qaeda.”

There is another point that I apparently need to insist upon, since it so often seems to be missed: when it comes to opposition to the war in Afghanistan, I am most certainly not part of a minority. It’s a majority in Canada that has consistently rejected the war, even to the extent that our right wing extremist government has agreed to withdraw next year. In the U.S. a majority now opposes the war as well. Across most NATO nations, the majority of the public remains opposed to the war. The minority is the one, like this hate-filled sub-species of cretin to which Holden, Wigon, and the likes belong, that continues with this turgid, self-applauding, swollen-headed and loudmouthed defense of an illegal and immoral war of aggression. They are the minority, and far from being able to deal with it, they are not even aware of the fact.

They have not been able to stomach the facts presented coolly and rationally thus far, and I imagine what follows will bring on epileptic fits:

Opinion Polls: Afghanistan

• ABC NEWS/BBC/ARD POLL – AFGHANISTAN: WHERE THINGS STAND, Feb. 9, 2009: “Support for U.S. Efforts Plummets Amid Afghanistan’s Ongoing Strife”
• Afghan Public Opinion and the Afghan War: A breakout of the data in the ABC News Poll, by the Center for Strategic & International Studies
• Afghanistan Public Opinion Survey:July 16-26, 2009. By the International Republican Institute

Opinion Polls: Citizens in the West against the war in Afghanistan

International:

• Overview: International Public Opinion on the War in Afghanistan

United States:

• U.S. Public divided on troop increase in Afghanistan: poll | Reuters
• Afghanistan Public Opinion Poll: ABC News, 10 April 2009
• Poll Shows US Isolationist Sentiment Growing | VOA News
• Poll: Americans pessimistic about Afghan war | Press TV
• 58% of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan | CNN
• Most Americans see Afghan fight worth US bloodshed: poll
• Polling Analysis: Afghanistan 2009 Vs. Iraq 2007 | CBS
• CBS News Polls on Afghanistan

Canada:

• Half Would Support Civilian Mission in Afghanistan Beyond 2011 | Harris-Decima, Oct. 22, 2009
• Leger Marketing poll September 22-25, 2009 – Canadians Massively Want Canada to Stop Combating in Afghanistan (see p. 15)
• 55% of Canadians opposed to mission in Afghanistan | Rape law saps support for Afghan mission, poll finds | Apr. 8, 2009
• Half of Canadians Would End Afghan Mission | Angus-Reid, Mar. 9, 2009
• Almost Half of Canadians Would End Afghanistan Mission Before 2011 | Angus-Reid Poll, Mar. 7, 2009
• 65% of Canadians say “no” to keeping troops in Afghanistan should Obama request it | Feb. 13, 2009
• 55% of Canadians say “no” to keeping troops in Afghanistan should Obama request it | Jan. 19, 2009
• 54% of Canadians oppose the war in Afghanistan (also here)
• Support for Afghan Mission Drops in UK, Canada (also here, from Angus-Reid)
• More Canadians Oppose Afghanistan Extension (58% against the extension to 2011) | Angus-Reid, Jul. 10, 2008
• 56% of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan | Strategic Counsel – Globe & Mail – CTV, Jan. 14, 2008 (p. 22)
• 59% of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan | Strategic Counsel – Globe & Mail – CTV, July 16, 2007 (p. 9)
• 55% of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan | Strategic Counsel – Globe & Mail – CTV, May 18, 2007 (p. 10)

• Canadians Want Troops Out of Afghanistan | Angus-Reid Poll, Apr. 26, 2007
• 57% of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan | Strategic Counsel – Globe & Mail – CTV, Apr. 25, 2007 (p. 6)
• Canada: CBC-Environics public issues poll, 2006
• 53% of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan | Strategic Counsel – Globe & Mail – CTV, Oct. 16, 2006 (p. 13)
• 49% of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan | Strategic Counsel – Globe & Mail – CTV, Sep. 18, 2006 (p. 6)
• 55% of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan | Strategic Counsel – Globe & Mail – CTV, Aug. 14, 2006
• 56% of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan | Strategic Counsel – Globe & Mail – CTV, July 18, 2006 (p. 10)
• 54% of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan | Strategic Counsel – Globe & Mail – CTV, May 5, 2006 (p. 10)
• 55% of Canadians support sending troops to Afghanistan, 70% believe that Canadian Forces are engaged in peacekeeping in Afghanistan and not combat | Strategic Counsel – Globe & Mail – CTV, March, 2006 (p. 8-15)

U.K.:

• Poll shows most Britons oppose war in Afghanistan | Reuters
• 64% of Britons believe the Afghan war is unwinnable
• UK: War in Afghanistan: Not in our name – 71% of Britons back IoS call for withdrawal of forces within a year
• Support for Afghan Mission Drops in UK, Canada (also here, from Angus-Reid)
• UK: Most remain against Afghan war

Germany, Australia:

• More than 60% of Germans want withdrawal from Afghanistan | Spiegel
• 56% of Australians do not support the war in Afghanistan
• Australia: War in Afghanistan splits the nation

Europe:

• Majority of Europeans oppose escalation of the war in Afghanistan: Transatlantic Trends Survey, German Marshall Fund, pages 14-15

Speaking of western kids, I found Rick Holden in Gaia Online, a community for teenage fans of anime and manga.

Peacekeeping holds former parties of a conflict apart and holds them to a
peace agreement; but that’s not what this war in
Afghanistan is about. Don’t know you if you read them but there’s now a few reports of the Americans trying to undermine
peace talks between Karzai and the Talibs. Peace ain’t the American goal here and the serious intolerance of difference, where they can’t allow anyone to live different and separate, is a great way to build on your society’s prejudice and use it for bigger imperial goals.

Back to the troll one last time Max. This one stuck with me. WIGON: “I spend a lot of time in developing dialog with extremists on public forums (for transparency reasons so I am not accused of aiding terrorists) so as to better understand their world view and belief systems. They are easy to find.” I just can’t stop laughing my ass off here!
Sure Wigon, they’re easy to find but that’s only because you see “extremists” everywhere. They’re not easy to find if they’re Afghans, because the hugest majority imaginable is illiterate and has no web access. Try again sucker, you fail.

perhaps the best way to understand the dreams of victory and fortune in addition to the tirades of the clearly irritated would be members of the imperial class posting on this page. Buen trabajo Maximiliano, por eso sigo volviendo.

What you instead see the trolls doing is something very much in keeping with their American cultural background: endless repetition. They are the most dynamically static people I know, very busy doing the same thing over and over again, producing in mass quantities just as they consume. Their public “debates,” which continue ceaselessly on some topics, in fact consist of little more than a few set questions, and a few points, repeated ad nauseum. It’s their method, part of the industrial production of “truth” found in their consumer advertising industry. Not able to self-reflect, and even less able to self-criticize, the trolls like Wigon and Holden reproduce the same pattern without question, and the same basic assumptions. The assumption is a simplistic one: in repetition, there must be truth. If something is repeated often enough, then it must be true. This is a blindly faithful resort to orthodoxy — and if they understood what orthodoxy really was, they would understand why resorting to it is a sign that they are in deep trouble. As with orthodoxy of the religious sort, they cannot tolerate (and they can barely conceive) that anyone would stand up to them: they experience that as a sort of religious violation. No wonder, given that these patriots are American patriots specifically, American exceptionalists, who think they are God’s chosen people and their destiny is divine providence.

It is my privilege to be a member of a living generation that sees the power in their hands turn to shit, and to watch their horror-stricken faces as they look down and find themselves soiled, repulsive, and detested.

(Whenever you are back in Montreal again, let me know and we can talk further, especially as I know that on some points you will want to either disagree, or go further. I should have had you in my class to talk about the history of Canadian peacekeeping, as opposed to “peace building.” I would also like your view on some strangely contradictory opinion polls where the Canadian public supports the military, and peacekeeping, seeing the Afghan mission — incorrectly — as peacekeeping, and yet a consistent majority has been against the war almost since the very start.)

Hi Max, thought I’d post for a change. As I said in person I read this blog regularly and I hope we can catch up again. Full disclosure for your visitors: I’m an anthro MA student who supports anthros working for defence if it’s for peacekeeping purposes. We hardly do any peacekeeping as Canadians anymore which I see as a big problem.

Bigger problem for us is when anthros start advocating for outfits like HTS, the CIA, PsyOps, whatever, and come pretty close to criminalizing anyone who speaks up for the rights of Afghans. It sure as shit ain’t nuance when your side gets all the alibis from you and the other side gets all the demonizing. Anthros who do this need to remember: the rights of self-determination for all peoples (and it doesn’t matter if you like the peoples or not, that’s why it’s a universal right promoted by the UN),
colonialism is outlawed under the UN charter, and force is not supposed to be an instrument of first resort in relations among nations. If you don’t advocate for these things, you advocate for international
chaos and terrorism. You don’t need to be a Taliban lover to understand they have rights too and advocating for rights to be respected doesn’t mean your some sort of secret turban wearing shadow Muslim. we’re not gonna have
any serious conversations if these are the cheap mind tricks people use.

@Wigon

I’m thinking of what I read here from you and about you. As I just said I read this blog pretty often and I am pretty sure you don’t. So you should reserve judgment until you know better or else you come off sounding a bit ignorant. You’re rushing for the goal post thinking you’re gonna be the one to score the big one. You need to stop and think, and from what I read
here it looks like that would be a big change for you. You seem pretty clueless about what the article is actually about. You should read it before sounding off on irrelevant topics and putting words into people’s mouths. I don’t know if you’re an anthro, I pretty much doubt it, because your way of asking questions just sucks. It shows you’ve formed
your judgment first (prejudice) and your questions are just rhetorical. Try doing a real interview like that.

Speaking of rank amateurs, Wigon. This is someone who approaches you online with, “Hey, I’m a fellow anthropologist!”, and then proceeds to ask his interview questions, all of which are leading questions, mostly accusations that end with a weak and superficial question mark. All of this done anonymously. Then he claims to be active in Muslim forums online, trying to persuade their users to take alternate paths, so as to be less of an effective resistance against his beloved empire. In other words, they engage in covert research and deception, and are even outrageously stupid enough to approach an anthropologist, claiming to be a “fellow,” yet anonymously. Then these same ignorant assholes will come here and defend their research as both ethical and anthropological, when it is absolutely neither — and they prove it, by demonstrating their ethics openly and in front of everyone!

All these little colonialist brats are is not anthropologists, least of all “fellow” anthropologists, but puny-minded, money-grubbing, self-seekers whose only varnish is that of patriotism. When their hired killers kill, that’s alright…but when their hired killers finally get killed by the resistance, then they innocently (read: stupidly) inquire: “Why do you advocate violence?” And they dare to call an attack on the CIA and Blackwater “terrorism.” As I said, complete and utter assholes, who act as if they have a right to be anywhere in the world, doing whatever they want. They are pollutants, at best.

More broadly, these trolls cannot even convert a friendly home audience, nor critical anthropologists, yet they pretend to go into “extremist” public forums (which one, Little Green Footballs? The Mudville Gazette?) and think they will teach Muslims to be more like the American vision of a good Muslim, and not fight America. As if such turds cannot be smelled out miles away before they land in those fora, as if the users there were not awaiting them. What they do, in the end, is to provide all sorts of intelligence to the “jihadists” on some basic patterns of U.S. analytical methods and propaganda tactics, which they then use against the U.S. — so good news all round.

Did somebody say “insidious” ?

Looking forward to reading your next essay.