JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY PAUL KORING IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

We went into Afghanistan for one reason only.

The exact quote is: we owe one to the Pentagon.

Those words were said considering Canada’s previous principled refusal to enter the insane slaughter in Iraq and to participate in one of America’s projects for the militarization of space.

The Liberals, in agreeing, thought Canadians would not be in front-line duty and serve only as the kind of behind-the-front (fairly token) support true so many other NATO nations hoping to placate America.

Also since America had managed to get a UN resolution – as it mostly does in such matters through quiet browbeating, threats to aid, cajoling, and even pay-back threats – Canada took it as a sign of international recognition of legitimacy.

But Afghanistan never had real legitimacy.

Just look at all the NATO contributions. In view of the size of the country and of the exaggerated American claims of its vital nature and world-importance, all the contributions are token, ranging in size from a few hundred to a few thousand.

Does anyone not believe that had NATO countries believed the American nonsense about the vital nature of the mission that the contributions would have been in the tens of thousands?

The entire matter has been a vast charade, a charade basically covering America’s naked desire for extreme revenge in Afghanistan.

The Taleban never attacked anyone, and to this day we haven’t one ounce of proof bin Laden had anything to do with it, other than to enjoy the spectacle of an enemy being hurt.

Nasty as the Taleban were, they were no worse than the ugly members of the Northern Alliance, the people America used – behind a front of carpet-bombing – to actually fight the Taleban and the people some of whose members rule until this day.

All the stuff about rights was the lowest form of propaganda.

After all, the Russians during their invasion and occupation did many things in keeping with improving Afghanistan’s modernity, and what was the American response? To send billions in armaments to the people fighting the Russians.

We have no better modern example of a pointless war presented as something which it was not.

Even Vietnam, that modern holocaust in which the United States killed perhaps 3 million people and left behind a hideous mess of mine and Agent Orange and craters from carpet-bombing, never had such phony propaganda about its purpose.

A fool’s mission all around I am sorry to say, but the ugly truth may better prepare Canadians against such lunatic American projects in future.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY PAUL KORING IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

This guy is shilling for Harper.

We can “maintain our air defense” with much less costly weapons.

Besides, there are no serious challenges to our air defense. None.

We need planes to escort errant air liners and the like. That doesn’t require the ultimate sophistication.

Having a large storehouse of highly sophisticated weapons is an open invitation to getting involved with nonsense like Libya or war crimes like Iraq.

Many of the best historians agree that the useless horror of WWI started in large part because all of Europe was a heavily armed camp.

Politicians and military people will always use power if it is there.

Just so right now in Libya, a lunatic business we do not even discuss.

And just so America’s pointless crusade in Afghanistan where we have spent a considerable number of lives and great treasure.

A sheer waste.
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“However, if you throw your back out trying to shovel deep snow when it does fall, you can be very uncomfortable for a long time. That event can make the snowblower look cheap and handy.

Note to Putin or any other aggressive interloper – we understand the need for snowblowers. Don’t even think about messing with us or our pals.”

A totally false analogy.

A snow-blower is a useful and time-saving tool, used many times a year.

And snow-blowers never start wars, the most wasteful and savage enterprise on earth.

A high-tech supersonic fighter is useless unless something extraordinary happens.

It just sits on the tarmac most of the time, gets its exquisitely fine-tuning put out of tune by jet jockeys taking it out for a playful spin, and absorbs vast amounts of cash on maintenance.

Even mentioning Putin marks the writer as something of a right-wing crank.

Its the cheap Harper ploy on Arctic sovereignty, ignoring the genuine threat against which these planes are useless.

We have infinitely less to fear from Putin’s Russia truly than we do from the United States, a country which now regularly attacks and bombs countries it doesn’t agree with.

Arctic sovereignty and Great Lakes water are two great targets for American interests.

Were the United States inclined to flex its muscle on us, this small number of jets would be shot down in a day.

The contract represents little more than a subsidy to the Pentagon trying to develop this costly machine.
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Further on the silly snow-blower analogy.

If you live in Georgia, a snow-blower is an utterly useless thing with no conceivable use ever, a vast waste of money and time.

In terms of geo-politics, we actually do live in Georgia.

The world’s Frankenstein military resides next door, watching with unblinking eyes.

No one else, but I mean no one, is going to come calling.

So we do not need this plane for any possible circumstance.

The Pentagon wants us to buy it – as it wants other NATO countries to buy it – to help subsidize its astronomical cost.

Just as when the US fights its various wars, it is always cajoling and pressuring its allies to join them – effectively a subsidy of activities they chose alone to engage in.

What a damn poor way to blow tens of billions of dollars.

Remember, Harper is the most pathetically servile prime minister towards the United States in our history.

He supports and goes along with whatever they choose to do but he is always disingenuous about just what he is doing, and just so this silly plane.

His stuff about Arctic sovereignty is a cheap political game because he entirely ignores the genuine threat to it, instead serving its interests without hesitation, and even completely adopting the political methods and language of the Republican Party.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

I think there is a real possibility that Harper’s sanity is crumbling.

First, we had his troubling ramblings about fighting anti-Semitism as a defense for his abject failure at United Nations diplomacy.

Then, we had his economically-ignorant defense at the G-20 of America’s debasing its currency, truly bizarre since he has a graduate degree in economics and is known as rather a Chicago-school man.

Now, we have his claim for unilateral powers over the armed forces. I did think the Governor-General was Commander-in-Chief, and I did think Parliament always was the ultimate decision-maker in our society.

There are late-onset forms of certain serious mental illnesses from which he may be suffering, or this could just be a form of megalomania that has set in.

Whether that is the case or not, I would think he is under terrible stress, his entire political career being widely regarded as unsuccessful beyond the mechanics of holding onto office through tricks and games.

He must realize that he will never get a majority government, something I am sure he has worked tirelessly towards, and he must know most Canadians do not trust, or even particularly like, him.

He also must realize he has not managed to build a Conservative Party the population regards well, his cabinet being mainly controlled yes-men and intellectual mediocrities, each afraid of Harper’s reported ugly private rages.

And he has failed utterly to establish a Conservative brand for ethics, having been caught time and again indulging in shady and unethical and even nasty-child practices.

On the international scene, his years have sent Canada’s reputation tumbling, and even he must be aware of that.

It is an unwelcome test of the strength of our political institutions if we can survive with dignity the assault on our traditions Harper represents.
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Erika from America:

Canadians “aren’t that principled…”?

Oh, my, Americans are so principled.

I think we saw that at Abu Ghraib, didn’t we?

And at Guantanamo?

And when General Dostum, America’s Northern Alliance friend, drove 3,000 Taleban prisoners in batches in sealed vans out onto the desert to suffocate while American soldiers watched and picked their noses?

And in all the trail of lies leading to an illegal invasion in Iraq, something which should make members of Bush cabinet subject to trial as war criminals?

Oh, and the holocaust in Vietnam reflected proudly on those principles, didn’t it?

Slaughtering 3 million. Using napalm. Torturing. Throwing men from helicopters. Sending in nightcrawler special forces to villages to cut people’s throats in their sleep: 20,000 village leaders in good old Operation Phoenix.

You sure can’t beat that for principled.

How about the toppling of the peaceful government of Cambodia, allowing the Khmer Rouge to take over and murder a million more?

How about the overthrow of many democratic governments with which the US did not agree? Guatemala, Haiti. Chile. Iran. And more.

How about America’s not speaking out one meaningful word as Israel slowly starves one and a half million in Gaza today?

“Canadians can’t handle the truth.”

I think the writer has been watching too many Jack Nicholson movies.

It is clearly, overwhelmingly Americans who cannot “handle the truth,” including of course the fact that their sense of entitlement and poor regulation have sent the world tumbling into an economic crisis.

But don’t worry, America will climb out, not by passing reasonable measures or needed new taxes, but by debasing its currency, just as it did after Vietnam, leaving the whole world “holding the bag” as it were.

“The widespread sentiment is that it’s an American war,” but dear Erika from America that’s exactly what it is, a pointless American war, one in a long string of pointless wars since WWII.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

You lose when you choose the wrong battles.

America is fighting the people of Afghanistan, at least a very large portion of them.

That is a battle you can never win unless you are prepared to behave like Stalin’s Russia and crush everyone.

Sadly, America is being pulled in that direction. Its drone killings and air attacks have almost certainly killed far more innocent people than suspected “bad guys.”

There never has been a definable “mission” in Afghanistan, other than not-to-be-uttered task of American vengeance.

America went there, against the advice of many wise people at the time, as a response to arm-pumping bullies sitting in bars across the land watching images of the twin towers endlessly repeated over beer. It was the same belly-over-belt battle cry you get for the Superbowl.

The effort gained a modicum of international respectability by Bush-Cheney strong-arming the United Nations into passing a resolution, something which at that time, with America’s great financial and economic strengths and calling in many markers with threats and promises, was not overly difficult to achieve and something it has done a number of times.

But the real test of the international community’s belief in America’s “cause” is the numbers of troops they committed and the nature of their assignments.

The numbers are so small and the assignments are so limited that it becomes a very black joke when America sounds its trumpet about a mission vital to the whole world.

It clearly is not, else millions of troops would have poured into Afghanistan and completely occupied it. NATO fully engaged would be an awesome event, but it was never more engaged than press briefings and contingents of troops the size of a Remembrance Day parade.

Canada went there, having offended the Bush-Cheney sensibilities a few times (thank you, again, Mr. Chretien, for keeping us out of the dirty, murderous hell of Iraq) because it felt the pressure – the same kind of pressure with which the U.S. obtains U.N. resolutions – that it “owed one to the Pentagon.”

The Liberals expected the commitment to be similar to that of other NATO countries – that is, minimal – but our current wannabe-Republican government managed to put them in the worst possible spot. Pure incompetence, as was the turning over of detainees, mostly poor farmers – for torture, something they continue to hide.

Ours is a fool’s mission. Canada’s forces have done their best, but doing your best in a pointless task goes nowhere, and that is where we are, nowhere.

The Taleban need never have been our enemies. They attacked no one. And the guys we allied ourselves with are every bit as backward. Indeed, few seem aware of the fact but it was the Northern Alliance – “our” guys – who first let bin Laden stay in the country.

The Taleban, formed in the face of a murderous chaos after the Russians left to provide what locals regarded as clean government, only refused to extradite bin Laden because the U.S. provided not one scrap of evidence against him, the provision of such evidence being the normal procedure in extraditions everywhere.

The measure of American dissimulation is the absurd occasional recording of bin Laden, a man who was certainly killed in the air bombardment at the beginning, a bombardment so awful the U.S. never wanted to reveal the details, just as it has always hidden the extent of its victims in Iraq.

All the garbage about women and backwardness is just that, garbage: it was Bush-Cheney propaganda to win over soccer moms for war. Yes, Afghanistan is backward, but we have done very little in reality to change that – actually an impossible task for a vast land of 30 million – and the world is screaming with backward places and abuse against women.

In Africa, 3 million women a year suffer genital mutilation, and in many places there young girls are routinely raped by the older men in their village who are in no way held accountable. Where are the calls to invade and sort that horror out? There are none, of course, but we kid ourselves that that is why we are wasting lives and great treasure in Afghanistan.

Again, Afghanistan is a fool’s mission.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSES TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“The refreshing openness shown by some MPs to continuing Canada’s military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2011 is welcome”

Welcome by whom?

Who writes such rubbish as an editorial?

Afghanistan is the biggest waste of life and treasure in Canadian modern history.

We have no purpose there at all, other than “owing one to the Pentagon.”

President Karzai and the other parties there are perfectly capable of sorting things out themselves.

One thing is sure, occupation by foreign soldiers hinders Afghanistan’s ability to mend its affairs.
____________________

Americano reminds us, if we needed reminding, of the mindset that gave the world the holocaust of Vietnam, the atrocities of Cambodia, the savagery of Iraq, and the stupid blundering of Afghanistan.

Along the way, there were countless lesser Appalachian Throwback works, from Chile to Somalia.

And America crowned its glories by so steeping itself in debt that it caused a financial collapse.

Truly, is there any country on earth more poorly run or more destructive in its actions?

China is almost a model world citizen by comparison.

And why does everyone not treat the U.S. as though these truths were obvious?

Only because of its wealth, and nothing else.

But all its stupidities are putting stress even on that for the future.

Some clown calling himself or herself “Americano” should give Canadians advice?

It’s just more proof of arrogance and ignorance beyond measure.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“…stay course…”?

More stupid American war speech infecting Canada like a contagious disease.

Some Canadians now say “the boys” and we have the brainless McGuinty offering of “the Highway of Heroes.”

And, of course, the pathetic, stick-on plastic yellow ribbons.

Our CBC Radio in its decline produced and broadcast an idiotic series called Afghanada. Every word and sound of that propaganda could have passed for something from America, save only the actor with the phony Newfoundland speech.

These are all signs of how destructive this business has been to Canadian values.

The Pentagon is like the fabled tar-baby. You can’t touch it without pitch stuck to your hands.

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“… I disrespected parents of dead soldiers?”

Sorry, but there’s another example of trash American speech.

There is no such word as “disrespected.” You “show disrespect,” unless you come from Arkansas or the streets of Detroit.

Further, if parents have the sheer arrogance to beg the government to stay in the killing business just to make the loss of their children somehow more meaningful, they themselves are opening the door to justified attacks on their judgment.

Having lost someone doesn’t give you a special right to advocate like that. It is shameful and abusive.

It is exactly the kind of non-think we see in America’s professional-victim society.

______________________

“Sorry, old bean. Disrespect may also be used as a transitive verb”

Only by those who also use barbarities like “flied out.”

War is, if you will, the secret life of chimpanzees. It is when humans drop all the rules and decencies we have patiently built up over time and set out to murder, rape, and destroy.

That’s why, for example, soldiers in Afghanistan are warned by the Canadian authorities to ignore the bloody rapes of boys that take place regularly in this place we’re supposed to be saving.

Many have witnessed our own allies and workers like interpreters literally leaving children bleeding on the ground from gang rapes.

I point out that I believe the corruption of language reflects this corruption of values.

America has been a society dedicated to war for decades. It has killed millions needlessly, three million just in Vietnam.

Propagandists now are working overtime to alter our culture in the same direction.

_____________________

“Most of us have the power to use logic and factual information. Use it.”

Thus says someone whose entire comment shows little of either.

The Taliban were the government of the country, and they attacked no one. The U.S. invasion drove them out.

The very word “insurgents” is a weasel-word. The Taliban are not invaders. They are not foreigners. They are a large portion of the population of the place.

The governors America has put in their place belonged to the Northern Alliance, people every bit as backward as the Taliban, their former opponents. Indeed, it was the Northern Alliance who permitted bin Laden to reside in Afghanistan.

After the Russians withdrew, the Northern Alliance took power, and ran the country the way a bloodthirsty mafia would. There was chaos in the streets. Fighting everywhere. Injustice everywhere. Corruption everywhere.

The Taliban actually were formed as a “clean government” party, and they did clean things up on taking power, as for instance by totally stopping opium production.

They are not to our tastes, but, believe me, none of the parties in Afghanistan are. They all have 14th century views because the country lives in the 14th century.

Indeed, the drugs are pouring out of Afghanistan, completely ignored by the U.S. because it is some of their people profiting.

You want modernity? You help the economy develop. You do not bomb people.

America went there to kill, it went for vengeance. Everything else is window-dressing. And Canadian soldiers are part of the decorations.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED COMMENT TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“What happened over there that he has become so bitter against our troops and freedom.”

How many times have we read a variation of this completely uninformed comment?

It originated with that great bulk of twisted ethics, Stephen Harper, the very man who is entirely responsible for the behavior of the government and its representatives abroad, including troops.

What are the facts?

Armies are disciplined to do what they are told – that is a major part of their often humiliating basic training, always saluting and saying “Sir.”

Armies, in every modern democracy, are under the command of an elected government.

Armies’ policies are all set by civilian overlords.

Armies go nowhere and do nothing without civilian direction.

And we would not have it any other way.

So, who are the civilians responsible for what happened in Afghanistan?

Stephen Harper.

This is Harper’s shabbiest performance to date.

He’s blaming others for his own failure and trying to sound patriotic while doing it.

I do recall him doing other very similar things. It clearly is a basic part of his character. After Israel’s savage slaughters in Lebanon and Gaza, he attempted to pin the label of anti-Semite on honest Canadian critics.

Our own prime minister calling us names because we say things with which he disagrees.

What a disaster he is as a national leader.

How far we have fallen.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

 
Yes, in a world run by the kind of rules we were taught as children by traditional parents, churches, and schools, that’s what would happen.

But that world, a world in which the good guys always win and where honesty always counts, is just a hopeful dream as most of us sadly learn after being buffeted about by the brutal realities.

These events provide us, those who are paying attention, the perfect definition of what Harper’s government truly represents.

Harper, a man of supposedly conservative principles (which traditionally are thought of as standing for old-fashioned stuff like honesty and responsibility) in fact is an ugly opportunist willing to do almost anything to cover the blundering stupidities of his cabinet.

Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” was always a favorite play of mine.

Here we see Mr. Colvin as the good Dr. Stockman, and Harper as one of the backroom leaders of the mob ready to run the doctor out of town for telling the truth that the town’s public baths are dangerous to health.

Well, we can’t change the fundamental opportunism and dishonesty of Harper and MacKay, but we can all celebrate the bravery and honesty of Mr. Colvin.

Doing so makes Canada at least a little better place.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Obfuscation is an old tactic of intelligence services and, as in the recent investigation into four RCMP officers’ criminal incompetence at Vancouver’s airport, police forces under investigation for gross failures.

It is used most often to cover up, not so much genuine secrets as the facts of blundering incompetence and poor judgment.

The principle is simple: it is better to be considered one who is being obviously less than transparent than one who is a laughable incompetent.

That is precisely what is happening here.

Harper’s cabinet in total likely sets something of a national record for incompetence and blundering in a single group of people.

This undoubtedly was another case of sending body bags to reservations as preparation for H1N1.

But the leader of these political buffoons, Canada’s own Newt Gingrich (that wonderful family-values man who asked his wife, dying of cancer, for a divorce), gives this sad story a new quality with his filthy suggestions that critics are blaming the forces.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

I believe in this case, as in so many others, Harper’s government has demonstrated sheer incompetence.

I doubt they set out to give men – mostly innocent farmers – over to torture. But as we’ve seen time and time again, the cabinet functions like a gang of Keystone Cops, from dropping top secrets in various places to sending body bags to native people’s reservations as preparation for the flu.

That tendency towards incompetence is exacerbated in its practical effects by a truly slavish admiration, almost a boy-scout devotion, to American government policy, something which of course induces very little use of independent thought. And we all know America has not been the least squeamish about human rights and filthy torture.

Some of the evil involved here is in Peter MacKay’s preacherly waving of hands and ranting when he knows perfectly well that he is lying through his teeth to protect his incompetent party.

But of course, Peter MacKay’s entire national career in politics has exhibited dishonesty, from his affair with a party subordinate to his lying about calling her a dog in Parliament and to his original broken word to a competitor for the leadership of the former Conservative party.

Peter MacKay is a proven ethical nullity.

But the true low note in evil here has been struck by Harper, with his filthy accusations about critics of a human-rights nightmare in Afghanistan blaming the brave soldiers.

Pure Rush Limbaugh. Is that the stuff now of Canada’s national politics, stuff dredged from the intellectual cesspools of American politics?

That is the kind of stuff which surely earns you a special place in hell.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

I have heard Rick Hillier speak at some length recently on CBC Radio. Naturally, he is out promoting his book.I thought he largely came off as a whiner, rather naïve about the realities of war and politics.Hillier went into Afghanistan literally barking about doing some killing, arrogantly tossing aside Canada’s sense of itself as a peaceful and peacekeeping place.

His words rankled many people, and naturally a control-freak like Harper put limits on Hillier’s mouth.

I tend to agree with Chantal Hebert’s assessment that Hillier’s book, unintentionally on his part, will only contribute to Canada’s not continuing a military commitment in Afghanistan beyond its commitment.

The entire Afghanistan adventure is nothing more than a demonstration of America’s ability to behave much as it pleases in the world. In the aftermath of 9/11, it pulled out all the stops in finance and diplomacy to get UN and NATO recognition of what essentially was vengeance.

The invasion never made any sense, and after America’s superficial “victory,” it had no idea what to do, except to let its brutal special forces loose on villages all over Afghanistan. Its “victory” amounted to a pact with the devils of the Northern Alliance – monsters like the mass-murderer General Dostum being as bad or worse than the Taleban – and it achieved nothing but a great deal of killing and the dispersal of the Taleban.

No NATO country – especially powerful ones like France or Germany – has made a commitment of troops that is in keeping with America’s paranoid assessment of the world dangers of Afghanistan – that fact is telling beyond anything else.

Canadians should never forget that the only reason we sent troops to Afghanistan was a decision in Ottawa that “we owed one to the Pentagon” after having refused to participate in America’s missile shield and its even more disastrous and murderous adventure in Iraq.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JOHN MANLEY IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

More bilge from John Manley.

How does Manley have any idea of turnout to make the statements he makes? We haven’t had a single good report, except that it was very low.

We owe nothing to Afghanistan. It has a crooked government, despite seven years of occupation. Drugs flow like water. Women still wear the burka through most of the country.

Credible reports say that the government’s handling of the election was atrocious with ballot boxes removed from some areas and ballot boxes stuffed in others.

I heard an expert witness on CBC Radio, a woman AP reporter who has a couple of decades of experience in the area.

Considering she is from an American organization, her testimony takes on extra force.

She spent many days talking to people in the street. Many expressed utter disgust with the government. Others actually expressed the notion that if the Taleban came back, maybe they wouldn’t be so extreme.

The tone was overall one of the election really won’t change anything, and I am sure that is right.

Just before the election, the president brought back one of the world’s most evil blackguards, General Dostum, a mass murderer.

And the good General, among many other ghastly acts, is directly responsible for executing about three thousand prisoners early in the occupation, under American supervision.

3,000 men driven in groups in locked vans out to the desert to be suffocated and buried in mass graves, while American soldiers looked on.

And Dostum is not Taleban, he is one of America’s allies of the Northern Alliance.

And of course there is that wonderful piece of legislation passed by the government regarding women’s rights in marriage.

Afghanistan is no more a democracy than Cuba.

It is stuck in the 14th century.

Does the pathetic Manley actually believe we have accomplished anything except kill people – according to the expert AP reporter, 50,000 died in Kabul alone – and set up some Potemkin villages for photo-ops?

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

I don’t know what else was ever expected.

Of course, the truth is nothing was legitimately expected because this entire enterprise showed no genuine planning or forethought.

The original American invasion was stupid and pointless, pure vengeance with no clear purpose.

The Taleban were not responsible for 9/11, but the U.S. was thirsting for blood and so the country had to be invaded.

Since then they’ve killed thousands and thousands of innocent people and bombed the crap out of this poor country, all while claiming they are improving it.

They’ve committed war crimes, including complicity in the savage killing of several thousand prisoners.

Our joining in on the basis of “owing one to the Pentagon” could result only in the costly, pointless operation in which we are now engaged.

Yes, the odd poll says people are glad for us, but all that means is that in such a poor, backward country people are glad to get whatever they can free from foreign soldiers.

Also polls cannot possibly reflect the population there since no one is going to poll the Taleban or many remote villages.