The soundtrack to the descent into chaos?

To complement Londonstani's excellent reporting over at Abu Muqawama on what's happening the other side of the Durand Line, this New York Times video feature on how Pakistani pop stars and the educated youth regard the TTP and the West is worth 9 minutes of your time.

Money line at about 3:40:

You talk to a musician over here and you ask him what's the problem, he won't come out with the most fantastic insightful answer for you. He'll come out with the most rhetorical, most cliched crap.

If only that was limited to Pakistani pop stars. Or musicians.

Public view of the war in Afghanistan: France vs. USA (updated)

Over at Secret Defense, Jean-Dominique Merchet points out the results of this new poll. It basically shows that 36% of the French and 57% percent of the American people interviewed favor the military intervention in Afghanistan.

Just to give some trends on French public opinion, a nice table (p.6) reminds us that 58% of French people favored intervention in Kosovo in 1999, 55% favored intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, 19% in Iraq in 2003, 55% in Darfur in 2007, and 45% in Afghanistan in July 2008.

The rest of the poll then provides data by political party, age, gender and profession (PS is Parti Socialiste, Modem is Bayrou's center right party and UMP is Sarkozy's party--one thing to remember on the French political spectrum, I view it as generally shifted left from the US spectrum so if you look at political platforms, the UMP and Modem would basically be the different factions within the Democratic Party here). It then does the same for US responders.

It's interesting and it shows clearly that the French public is increasingly oppposed to military intervention in Afghanistan.

So go take a look--I think even if your French is limited you should be able to get the gist of it.

Update: As John Henninger points out in the comments (I didn't get a chance to put it up last night so thanks for the reminder), the ABC/Washington Post issued this new poll yesterday.