Thursday, November 09, 2006

Huh?

The results of the latest Afghanistan poll are just plain strange:
50 per cent of Canadians asked in November expressed some degree of approval, that is, they either "somewhat approve" or "strongly approve" of Canada's participation in Afghanistan..

"Do you think in the end the Canadian mission is likely to be successful?" to which only 34 per cent said they thought it would be successful, compared to 58 per cent who said it would not be successful.


How is it that full third of people who expressed support for the mission think we will ultimately fail? So, you support Canadians dying for a lost cause? Bizarre. The only way I make sense of these results is that people support the mission, but think we are on the wrong path to be successful. People support the spirit, but not the reality.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Canadians are smarter than what Harper gives us credit for. Of course we want Afghanistan to be safe and secure for all the innocent people who live there, but we simply aren't going to accomplish this the way we're going at it right now.

The Conservatives wouldn't even allow us to debate this mission. How is that openess and transparency?

Karen said...

I agree with charlie for the most part, in that, of course we want a safe and secure Afghanistan.

As to, we are not going about it in the right way, (while I would agree), I don't think the "new" government has done a good job at explaining to Canadians what this new deployment entails.

The debate was a joke, another Harper strongarm ploy, poised in a way, that if you didn't vote, you didn't support the troops and if you did, you agreed with him. Gotcha! That's his game.

What was not debated was how we were to deploy, whether or not the 3 D's would be lived up to and the Lib's, (even Ignatieff), qualified their vote by saying that was the most important thing.

O'Connor has done a terrible job at relating the gov't position. At least Graham was out there saying this was going to get tough and Canadian's should be prepared, but, he held fast to the mission being balanced, not full out in the south.

I said O'Connor has been terrible in articulating...I say the same about Ambrose in her position. In the end, it's not them, it's Harper. He controls's their scripts and they are doing what the boss say's.

Surely recent events in the US have taught us about those who walk the line, at any cost, end up walking over a cliff.

Anonymous said...

The only way to make sense of these results is to know how badly designed the poll was.

I was surveyed for this one. The answers were so simplistic, I kept having to choose between two answers, when there were actually 5 or 6 possible ones. The whole experience was painfully frustrating for me and the poor man calling who didn't have an acceptable category for any of my answers.

eg. Q. Do you believe the war in Afghanistan is a U.S. led mission or a U.N. sanctioned, NATO-led mission?

A. both

Q You can't say both. I know the right answer. You have to pick which _you_ think is the right answer.

A. The U.S. is a part of NATO. Yes, I grasp that this isn't a renegade U.S. war like Iraq. But do I think that we've swithed our original approach to blindly follow a U.S. militaristic strategy, ignoring the economic and humanitarian root issues? Yes.

Q. Can I just say "don't know"?


Polls are useless. The only way their tyranny will end is if we stop giving any weight to their ridiculous results. The problem is, as soon as a poll leans in our favour, we tend to forget how useless they are and suddenly start using them as evidence. And so it continues..

wilson said...

Did you know that Bill Clinton spoke to a Canadian crowd yesterday and told Canadians to:
''Stay the course in Afghan war''

JEFF OUTHIT
CANADIAN PRESS

WATERLOO REGION (Nov 9, 2006)

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton urged Canada to keep its soldiers fighting in Afghanistan in a talk in Kitchener yesterday.

Pulling out of the country now could allow the repressive Taliban regime to take control again, he warned.

The Taliban would again offer protection to the terrorists who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001 and who are now in hiding, he said.

"That would have direct implications for your security," Clinton said.

Anonymous said...

Darko backs the gov as does cbc...Don Neuman.Keith Boag etc...dont believe a word they say or print. Her polls are biased always.

Steve V said...

rms

Thanks for the "insider" insights :)