| Summary/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.
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