blevkog

The Globe and Mail has some good stuff in todays (friday) paper about this with a column of good quotes from Gen. Hillier. Once again,I have to say I agree with him. The general view of americans aside, We need to stay in Afghanistan until they're secure enogh to function on their own and then we need to get the fuck out. This is going to take awhile and servicemen know the risks of the job. I think the perception problem is two-fold: 1)We in Canada distrust(rightly in my view)pretty much everything with American military involvement. this leaves many people with the belief that we're only there to help the yanks with their imperialism envy,and 2) Canadians are stuck on this warm fuzzy thing that the idea us our military being a peacekeeping force gives them. I've always seen this as primarily a result of a distaste for the military's real purpose,which involves a lot of death and destruction. Sometimes peace keeping legitimatly involves shooting the guy that won't keep the peace and no amount of emphasizing with them will change their view. As an ex serviceman I appreciate the concern for the lives of the people in-theatre,but I think that a lot of it is poorly informed and more than a little self-serving.

Just because it's gonna to be hard, and there's little chance of winning - is that any reason not to go? If everyone thought that way, few people would ever run a marathon. I'm with Doug, yes there are risks, especially to the members in theatre - but it's important to remember that a significant portion of those going are going to be Reservists, and unlike the Americans, all of them volunteered to go - including 17 members of my Squadron. Yes, they're going into danger and there will be people lost and/or injured, but, as I'm sure Romeo Dallaire would agree from his experiences in Rwanda, a greater tragedy would be to do nothing, and read a newspaper headline a year or two from now saying "Afghanistan Massacre" and realize, "We could have stopped this"

My main question about this war is the goal. What do we expect at the other end? How do we know when we are finished and can bring the troops home? It's obvious now that we are no longer looking for Osama bin Laden, or we'd probably have carried this fight into the suburbs of Karachi, so it's now nation-building time. Do we expect a democracy in the western sense? Will we settle for a friendly dictator? How about a civil war between warlords? An Islamic theocracy?

History has shown that this country is not prone to remaining unified for any length of time, except under duress, so the likelihood of a western-style government is unlikely at best. If that's the goal, we are indeed there for a very long time. If we're looking for a friendly (to us) dictator, then are we bound to support said dictator when rivals appear?

Well, if you read the Globe and Mail interview, Hillier does state that when the Afghan people say they're ready to stand on their own two feet we will leave - he says nothing about that being dependant on a friendly government or even a Western style democracy. We are not there to prop up anyone or build a nation - at least not in the sense of a 'Canadian Colony' - we're there to help these people rebuild a society that has been smashed back to the Stone Age by decades of repressive governments. We're building Schools, we're providing safe drinking water, and most of all, we're protecting these people. Look at his statements on the drug trade - he's saying that simply burning the poppy fields is not going to solve anything - the answer is to build up the Afghan's standard of living up to the point where they don't need to grow opium to survive - sentiments that are pretty much similar to statements you made regarding the Conservatives 'War on Crime'. As an example, a friend of mine has been working ever since the Soviet pullout for a company conducting mine-clearing operations - he's not doing this for the Americans, he wasn't doing this for the Taliban, and he's not doing it for Karzai or whoever winds up forming the government, he's doing this for the Afghan people, and it's a diservice to him to dismiss his efforts as 'Western Imperialism'.

Not once have I used the phrase "Western Imperialism" in my discussion of the Afghan War. I use it frequently when talking about Iraq, but I don't here and won't, so you misrepresent my argument. I do not doubt for a minute that the Canadian military and NGO's working in Afghanistan want the best for the people and look forward to the day that they can leave.

Remember how this all started - the Taliban government supported al Quaeda, al Quaeda attacked the US, and the US went after the Taliban and al Quaeda together. Some piece of al Quaeda got away and the Taliban government fell.

What now? The Taliban rose to power among the ashes left after the long war with the USSR, and by and large the same social forces that produced the Taliban (poverty, poor trade options, terrain inappropriate for useful communication and infrastructure development, etc) still exist today. And what is happening now? Increasing attacks from the Taliban, or groups affiliate with them.

Are we going to stay there until the Afghanistanis are no longer dirt poor? Are we going to pave the country for them? What is our mandate here? Specifically, I mean.

Hillier's statement about the Afghans asking us to leave, is vacuous - I have heard Rumsfeld say the exact same thing about the Iraqi people. The "people" are no more likely to do that than fly to the moon. An established government might, but at what point do we consider them "established"?

I never claimed that you used the term 'Western Imperialism' however, it was used in the comments in the original Globe and Mail story, which was the context I was using it in. If you think it was being used to misrepresent you - then I apologize. However, I will say that I'm met General Hillier, I've spoken to him, and comparing him to Rumsfield is a disservice. As for 'established government' - the last time I checked, the Afghanis had held an election and Karzai got a majority of the vote - seems pretty much an established government to me.

What's your alternative? If you can demonstrate to me that pulling out of Afghanistan right now will improve the lot of the Afghanis, I'll be the first to agree with you that the troops should come home.

Dan,
I didn't mean to discredit Hillier, he seems like a pretty good guy to me, though I haven't met him. I did mean to discredit his comment - it is empty rhetoric for the media.

Yes the Afghans have had elections, but you know as well as I that any real 'democracy' there ends at the limit of the NATO patrol ranges. The government will not stand if we were to pull out now. That in itself is probably a first step in a definition of a potential exit time - can the government we leave behind stand on its own? We could then focus the question more by asking things like "do we give a shit if it's a functioning democracy?". My suspicion is that our options at that level might be limited.

I do not know what the next step for us should be. In fact in previous discussions on this topic I have stated that pulling out is not an option; it's too late for that.

What I don't want to see is a prolonged holding pattern in a couple of key areas while the rest of the country goes to hell and stabilization becomes impossible. That would probably mean expanding the scale of the war from what we have right now, which I believe is doomed to fail.

Perhaps a coherent plan has already been laid out for pacifying the countryside, but I don't see how that's going to happen with the few troops that are there and I'm not even convinced that it is in fact possible anyway.

I'll agree with you that the comment comes across as empty rhetoric - whether that's due to Hillier or the tendency of the media to break things down into easily digestable 'bites' is debatable. We're certainly not using the tactic of 'staying in a couple of key areas' - the main reason there have been more attacks is that we've moved camp from Kabul, which was a stabilized area, into Kandahar, which is not. We're taking this one piece at a time - move in, build up the infrastructure - one of the things that doesn't get enough media attention is that we're not simply using the military, a large part of this are Police Officer's from the RCMP and police forces from across the country that are there to help build up the country's police force. Then, once there's enough local Afghani governance that the area is reasonably stabilized - we move on to another area.

I 've been thinking about my views on this topic over the last few days. probably its the sudden outpouring of "support our troops" sentiment from the Conservatives. I know that if I was still in the military and someone so for behind the lines that he gets the Globe and Mail at local rates started ranting about "stay the course" and "leaving will betray our honoured dead", which I'm starting to hear, my disgust would know no bounds. If theres one thing servicemen hate it's people who use our efforts and sacrifice to feel all warm and gooey inside without any real effort or danger on their part.You know who you are. I hate you all. Okay,enough ranting. If we're going to stay in Afghanistan, and I've made my views clear on that, we need to have clear, defined goals about what we want to accomplish and we need to know what circumstances must be in place to prompt our leaving. I think that there's a lot we can do to help this country but I also think that our being there at the levels we're at was, at least initially, because it was a way to help out the US without going into Iraq. It disturbs me that Harpers government seems to be avoiding the debate issue and on the surface at least, looks like there's things that a debate will bring out that they'd rather didn't come up.

It's finally happened. Stephen Harper has said that a debate on our involvment in Afghanistan will endanger the troops on the ground. In other words, setting clear objectives and an exit strategy will upset someone. I think that we as a nation can help Afghanistan a lot and I have my own views on what should be done,for all that those matter. Our government however, seems bent on convincing me that maybe there are other objectives being served here that they'd rather not make a lot of noise about. Probably ones that free up US troops for Iraq. I don't think that I'm mistaken in claiming that this was the general belief when the raise in troop levels was brought in by the Liberals. In any case our soldier's safety is better served by knowing up-front the circumstances under which we will cut and run. In other words, what has to happen before we decide that any good we can do isn't worth the present level of risk? For Harper to state that Canadians don't "cut and run" (his words) is an appeal to the kind of idiot patriotism that gets better men killed and begs for blind obedience from the populace. Anyone else believe that whenever your government starts pulling this Father knows best crap it's time to take to the streets? Or at the very call your local Mp? I guess I'm calling that idiot ex-mayor we elected.