Discursive battlefields: Support(ing) the troops in Canada

Abstract

Winning hearts and minds in counterinsurgency missions is not only a strategy to be used on foreign populations, but also one that is necessary on the ''home front.'' This article is focused on the home battlefield; it is an analysis of the efforts by Canadian political elites to justify the use of military resources during the 2001-2011 interventions in Afghanistan. To fully understand Canadian public opinion of the Afghanistan war requires assessing domestic discursive ''battlefields.'' This article examines domestic debates as a key ''battleground'' in the war to win public consent for Afghanistan. I argue that the absence of active resistance to military involvement in the Afghan mission can best be explained by examining discourse about Support(ing) the Troops, the effect of which was to censure anti-war voices. In short, despite public discontent about the war, Support the Troops discourse was manoeuvred in a way that stigmatized anti-war narratives. This article considers how the rhetoric of Support the Troops movements in Canada played a role in normalizing militarization, and how this discourse was manoeuvred to legitimize military activities in Afghanistan.

Understanding militarism after the end of the Cold War: History, international relations, and media studies ask new questions

“…A key overarching interest that runs through the critical and feminist research on militarism/militarization and the media is “the ways in which military identities are negotiated and constituted through communicative practices—both those of producers and consumers” (Corner & Parry, , p. 7). A focus on the everyday brings in a sense of temporality, and thus history, that “sheds light on the repetitive, ritualistic performance of subjectivities through mundane activities” in the private sphere that is actually a “significant site of negotiation and contestation” (Henry & Natanel, , p. 856; see also Wegner, ). Mundane, everyday activities and items, then, are crucial for constructing and maintaining militaristic identities, for example: Natanel's () ethnographic work on the everyday and microstrategies of dealing with occupation; Kuntsman and Stein's () work on Othering and everyday soldiering via social media posts; Hyde's () research on women's emotional work and stability‐making during war; Da Silva and Crilley's () discussions about the construction of everyday narratives online; or, Palafox's () statements about everyday people reflected in their songs as a type of political border.…”

The plural of soldier is not troops: The politics of groups in legitimating militaristic violence

“…The social prevalence of ‘the troops’ is most evident in the US, which is selected here as the paradigmatic case. Though this article brackets potential transnational diffusion, the phenomenon is also apparent in other democracies with professional armed forces, including Australia (News.com.au, 2015), Canada (Wegner, 2017), the UK (Basham, 2013: 23–27) and India (Parashar, 2018: 129). Despite this, with a few exceptions (Stahl, 2009; Managhan, 2011; Wegner, 2017), ‘the troops’ have rarely constituted an object of inquiry in their own right, instead appearing as a component of, or footnote to, broader analyses of militarism (see Butterworth and Moskal, 2009: 420; Bacevich, 2005: 23).…”

(Re)Producing military mythology at the Canada Army Run

“…Much recent work on the military/militarism in Canada focuses on the increased militarization of culture post-9/11 (Fremeth, 2010;Kozolanka, 2015;Wegner, 2017) and the diminishing (and problematic) role of peacekeeping (Dorn, 2005;Dorn & Libben, 2018;Razack, 2004;Young, 2019). Mutimer (2016, p. 210) argues that the formerly uncontested narrative depicting the Canadian Armed Forces as a primarily peacekeeping force is "under sustained threat in a military landscape increasingly understood as complex and uncertain."…”

“…Scholars have examined how in the United States' and United Kingdom's rhetoric around supporting troops has been used to justify military action and stifle critique of said action (Kelly, 2020b;Millar, 2019;Stahl, 2009;Tate, 2015). In the Canadian context, Wegner (2017) offers the mobilization of 'support the troops' rhetoric as an explanation for the low rates of political mobilization against Canadian military involvement in the war in Afghanistan despite significant rates of public disapproval. Wegner argues that: Support the Troops rhetoric was used by the Harper government as a tool for delegitimizing anti-war sentiments.…”

“…McCready and others (e.g., Wegner, 2017) argue that political elites were able to discursively equate support of troops with support of the war, and thus silence critique of war by presenting such critiques as being disrespectful to troops, a group who should be unquestionably supported and venerated. As politically useful as this rhetorical equation was to stifle critique of the Afghanistan occupation, its impact reaches further.…”