I find it irritating to be told that support for Canada’s military role in Afghanistan has fallen due to casualties there. The recent Globe-CTV poll showing a decline was done a full month after the impact of diplomat Glyn Berry’s death by suicide bomb, and well before the grim days in March when a rollover was followed by another suicide attack and then the axe assault on Capt. Trevor Greene.

So Prime Minister Stephen Harper was wrong to say Canadians shouldn’t “cut and run,” implying a fearful recoil was behind the opposition. And it is misleading for journalists like Marcus Gee to reverse the order and say, “With casualties on the rise, polls show that support for the Afghanistan mission is falling.”

It’s also insulting. Why can’t political and media élites assume public opinion has its own good reasons. Why did pollster Allan Gregg say he was “very, very surprised at the degree of opposition to something that is not well known by the population”? Can’t non-experts have their own forms of analysis? Don’t you think it’s possible for ordinary people who follow the news to imagine how complex it must be for Afghan peasants to see these small mountains of military equipment with white, clean-shaven faces arrive in their village? At least the other guys, whatever their demands, look like them and speak their language.

Maybe they’ve heard about wedding parties that were bombed by mistake. Likely they know the Americans came before, in the 1980s, leaving them once the Soviets were gone to descend into warlordism from which the Taliban promised to deliver them. Now the U.S. is back, along with allies like the Canadians — but for how long, and what are their real motives?

What about the violence of their own security forces, shown recently on TV, or the belligerent house searches we occasionally see footage of? A Canadian officer said his notions about Pashtun hospitality were confounded by that axe attack — as if he thought the locals should have taken the same anthro course he did. Maybe Canadians who responded to the poll hold a subtler view of the world.

Maybe they also think supporting democracy there doesn’t mean a European-style parliament in Kabul, but rather a sense of local control in the countryside. Maybe they feel history shows Afghanistan is a dreadful place for invaders, no matter what fine intentions they proclaim; and a tedious, low-profile process of civilian aid is the most hopeful route to progress.

Those élites can be awfully shortsighted historically. They tend to have ulterior motives and careers to worry about. Ordinary people can often take a more detached view. It makes them wary of bad processes repeating.

Ordinary people may also be suspicious of the idiotically named “war on terror,” of which the Afghanistan deployment is a part. They were right to be suspicious of invading Iraq, which has probably made future terror attacks like 9/11 more, not less, likely. It has even made Iraqis less secure than they were under Saddam, according to a former UN human rights official there.

The case of Afghanistan is different, but exists in the same context.

We’ve seen these élite-popular disagreements before. Think of Meech Lake or the Charlottetown accord. This one differs because it concerns foreign policy. It also differs because the Canadian military has weighed in. Under General Rick Hillier they are pushing hard for the current policy. Who knows what effect his comments about “scumbags” will have on his own troops and the way people there view them? Our commander in Kandahar has disputed the poll results, based on evidence like his email. Another officer writes scholarly polemics using dubious concepts like failed states. My question is: Don’t these soldiers have enough to worry about carrying out their mission? Is it a good idea to load onto them in addition, its ongoing justification?

The Prime Minister opposes a parliamentary debate because it could “weaken our troops” and put them “in more danger.” Well, if our political leaders won’t cast a sharp, questioning eye on all this, then who will look out for the welfare of our troops and make sure it doesn’t all go terribly wrong?

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.