摘要：In 2012, I was asked by the University of Manitoba to give a conference presentation on Canadian operations in Afghanistan, with an eye on the larger issues of Canadian and Western intervention during the past twenty years. I crafted a presentation based upon my preliminary work dealing with the history of the Canadian Army in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2011, the project with which I am currently engaged for the Canadian Army. However, it was clear during and after my presentation that what I put together was too detailed, and it assumed too much knowledge on behalf of a diverse group. There was not enough time to establish common ground between me and the audience. Furthermore, in informal conversations, and when socializing in various venues leading up to and after my talk, it was evident that many people I spoke with were overly focused upon a specific political-media complex meme to the exclusion of any new information or insight I could provide, given the level of access I have had to the war in Afghanistan, both in terms of documentation, and from the personal experience of ten operational deployments extending from 2003 to 2011.
