Regardless of what the politicians are doing in Ottawa over the detainee inquiry, or whether Canada’s “battle group” is scheduled to leave next year, it’s still important to focus on the mission now. We need to discuss what role Canada will take in Afghanistan after 2011. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said there will be no discussion or debate whatsoever in parliament as to what that role might be.
That means that the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee has had to step up and take those questions to task. There will be events taking place across the country over the next week that average Canadians, like yourself, can take part in, in order to raise awareness that people in Canada still care about the Afghan people. These conferences will help communicate what people living in Afghanistan, including Afghans who now live in Canada, would like to see from Canada in order to help them achieve the objective of a peaceful and democratic state.
Halifax on May 16
Maritime Conservatory
6199 Chebucto Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia [map]
7-10 pm
Montreal on May 17
Atwater Library
1200 avenue Atwater [map]
Westmount, QC
7-9 pm
Winnipeg on May 18
Global College
515 Portage Ave [map]
7-9 pm
Regina on May 20
Royal Saskatchewan Museum Theatre
2445 Albert Street [map]
7-9 pm
For more information: info@afghanistan-canada-solidarity.org
as someone who is concerned about the people who follow islam, i say we must keep all afgans in their own country. importing more potential jihadis is not a good idea.
I’m not sure how helping Afghans become free from having a jihidi state translates into importing them here?
No,we should stay in Afghanistan indefinitely,even if it takes 500 years to turn the Country into the democracy the people allegedly crave.
It only makes sense to send your best young people to a foreign shithole to die and be spat on by the MSM when they return,unless it’s in a coffin,then they’re victims of the Conservative government.
We should piss away billions of our dollars every year for a Country that has given so much to Canada’s culture,Afghani hash. Without it, hippies everywhere would suffer inferior product.
Bring our troops home in 2011,keep some redevelopment personnel there if you must help them “rebuild”,guarded by the Afghan national Army. Arm said Army to the teeth,and don’t worry about how they treat their detainees.
We’ve spent ENOUGH in people and money,and for little positive gain. Yes,girls can go to school,sometimes,and there have been other positive steps in education and industry,but we haven’t captured the “hearts and minds” of the Afghani people and never will.
We are, and will always be, outsiders,infidels,kaffirs,and we will never force a representative modern democracy on that Country even if we stay for 100 years. Let’s spend our resources on projects with a more realistic chance of success.
And DON’T give me the old “if we don’t stop them over there,we’ll have to stop them here” bullshit,they’re already here. If anyone is that worried about radical Islam,let’s spend the money and manpower de-radicalizing the Islamics that are here now,with outreach and education,and save our troops for better uses.
I don’t know. That sounds a little like the troops-out argument. Yeah, we’ve spent a lot of money, but a lot of troops? Hardly. Look at how many Canadians died in the great wars. Or Korea. With all due respect, and people know I have great respect for the military, 143 soldiers over 8 years is nothing. More people die in construction.
I also don’t agree that we don’t need to fight them there because they’re already here. These are wholly separate and important issues. We need to fight them in both places. That’s how counter-terrorism works.
Come on, buddy, you know better than that. That sounds like something a liberal would say. No offence, but “educating” Muslims isn’t the key to the battle. Abdulmutallab was a rich, educated little Islamic bastard who took it upon himself to blame the west for the evils of the world. The only thing that helps guys like that is a dark hole. Same way we’re helping Omar.
What dmorris said.
And again, as long as we don’t approach the security issue, and continue to fool ourselves into believing it is about culture, rather than ideology, the west will waste its time in the East for the wrong reasons.
As long as we refuse to confront the violent Jihad perpetrated by the true deobandi sunni followers of Islam, which has no borders, cares not for any country, and will never play by the rules of our western civilization, any debate that doesn’t approach the problem in Afghanistan as one perpetrated by the religion of Islam, gives the same quarter to their fighters as they give to ours and their civilian victims, all of it will be a waste of time.
The commenters here so far seem awfully confused about what precisely Canada is doing in Afghanistan, which really underlines the need for more public discussions like these panels.
For the record, the Afghan government and the vast majority of the Afghan population would like to see an end to the violent extremists who plague their country. In this, they welcome our support. The Afghans who do come here tend to enjoy the lifestyle, opportunities and outlook of a free and secular political system. They reject the Taliban in Afghanistan and certainly don’t want the same thing to prevail here.
In any case, you can read about what sort of help Afghans have requested from us for a future role at http://afghanistan-canada-solidarity.org/casc-report-keeping-our-promises
I know exactly what we’re doing there and I know 99% of the Canadian public knows very little of Afghan history, the Pashtunwalli code of Justice, or how the relativistic approach that we can help the inherent free-booty tribes, those inheritors of the Ahmad Shah’s land pirates whose tribal culture is more closely related to the Sharia-esque and Islamic submission mentality than any of our own western democratic and republic values, that no amount of help for Afghanistan will get the result liberal minded, or those that aspire to secular values, will get the results we hope for. The lives of our troops are being wasted on a welfare mission to help an nation get its own security act together, not fight jihadist terrorism, which in both a religious and cultural sense, is closer to the existing values of Afghans than being concerned about human rights.
I notice your site’s Principle’s encourage vigorous debate, but try to address the religious and culturally sanctioned polygamy leading to one of the highest consanguine rates on the planet, try to address the pre-disposition to enforce a tribal sense of honour over basic human rights which sanction sodomy, rape and murder. Try to address Islamic superiority and the resentment of kuffars and infidels providing help from any position than an inferior one.
And why is Afghanistan’s problem the West’s problem? Why aren’t the Islamic nations who’ve won the geological lottery that oil has provided to help their neighbours?
The fact that the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee is a UN organization should say it all. The UN, which condemns Israeli aggression but stays silent on the violation of human rights from within the Islamic Block, those countries of the OIC. The UN, which has become a laughing stock appointing Libya to the Human Rights organization in the past, and now Iran to a committee for women’s rights.
You may be trying to help the average afghan out of Medievalism, but you can’t do that without getting the afghan to abandon his Medieval/tribal/religious ways. He is just to proud to do so.
Notice I said “he” because women don’t have a voice where the real power lays, in the Jirgas. They are hidden, in the house, with the other wives and the children, which is why an accurate census will never be taken as officials are not allowed to meet with the rest of the family.
We, in Canada and the West, do not have the time, or the patience to fix what it took centuries to build in Afghanistan. We won’t do it in one generation, or even in 10. Look at Turkey as it slowly slides into becoming a pseudo-theocracy from a corrupt democracy.
Islam and the success you wish to achieve in Afghanistan are not compatible. If it was, it would work successfully everywhere else Muslims are in the majority. Even in Indonesia, the most populous nation in Islam, the persecution of non-Muslims cannot be stopped, redressed or is it condemned by the UN.
If anything, we should be trying to fix the Islamic nations that are closer to becoming like minded to our western values and application of democracy and justice, sort of working for the edges inward. By immersing ourselves in the worst possible place on the planet where Islamic minded justice and it’s influence over culture is prevalent, and hoping to make a difference is madness.
I’ve heard the Wilders’ arguments on the inherent barbarism and tribalism of Islam, and in the United States it’s Ron Paul leading the charge. I just don’t agree.
I think that people are taking a very diverse country of Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmen, etc, and thinking they’re all guided by similar values and beliefs because of the Islamic commonality.
The fact is that the Ron Pauls and Geert Wilders don’t have an argument for curtailing Islamic fascism other than to take a rather naive and facile approach of isolationism with the threat of carrying a big stick. If they get out of line, nuke ‘em. Is that about right?
Afghanistan happens to be our problem for a number of reasons. First, they struck in the US because we allowed terrorists to fester there in the first place. Pakistan has no interest in “helping” their neighbours since the regional instability is partly of their own design.
CASC isn’t a UN organization either. I don’t know where you’re getting your information from, but it’s incorrect. Which kind of invalidates the relevance of the rest of your commentary on the UN.
I think your dislike for Islam is misguiding your ability to take an objective look at humanitarian concerns and taking solidarity with Afghans who are interested in democracy and the rule of law.
Would have responded sooner, but for some reason, your comment responder thingy sent everything to my spam folder.
You are correct. Not a UN mission. I miss-read the “supporting the UN sanctioned mission” bit in their principles coupled with the “peace bird” in their logo. However, invoking anything the UN “sanctions” is a joke in itself for the very few reasons I’ve stated. The UN has lost all relevance and has become a mouth piece for the Islamic block as repeated motions to condemn Israel are tabled and voted on, yet any motions to even discuss what occurs within Islamic nations are out right dismissed or made “out of order.”
However, mine is not an argument based on what Wilders or Paul has been saying. And my dislike for Islam isn’t equal for all sects. The Ahmidiyya are on the right path, but have been branded apostates by the OIC, and as you know, this means death. I mainly dislike Islam because of the oft invoked lie that it is a religion of peace when it obviously isn’t. I haven’t succumbed to that Orwellian boot-to-face stop just yet.
You’ve also seemingly dismissed all those other bits I added after what you quoted, which are very much the problem when it comes to humanitarian aid. We can throw aid at them ‘till the goats come home, but until they fix those problems, all of it will be a waste.
What you would dismiss as culture simply finding commonality in Islam makes me recall what General Sir Charles James Napier said of Sati to the Sikhs, “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
Our Christian custom of giving aid comes with expectations which will never bear fruit as long as a relativistic approach is taken when discussion Afghan culture.
When we leave Afghanistan next year, it will be the first time that we leave the field not as victors. As a former member of HM’s Canadian Forces that sticks in my craw, yet fighting a war on a shoestring budget and not fighting it to win does the same.
Personally I am of the opinion that the west should use the same line of thinking as the Roman Empire did with it’s enemies…Oderint Dum Metuant…let them hate, so long as they fear.
It took many decades to rebuild germany and Japan following WWII. I don’t understand why we think Afghanistan would be any different.
We should never have gone over there without understanding what kind of committment was needed to bring real change. And it’s clear most Canadians are not willing to invest that kind of time and patience. Thanks MSM.
Even the Bushido Japanese were an identifiable enemy, who once defeated submitted to the conqueror as was their culture of supremicism. But the enemy we fight in Afghanistan are not singular or top down in a chain of command with an Emperor as were the Japanese. We have not defeated the enemy, which is Islam, when it comes to Afghanistan.
I know there will be many who read this and dismiss this as bigoted detracted comments. For which all I can say is, you fail to understand the “submission” which is Islam, which is what “Islam” means, not “Peace” as the relativistic arguments would have you believe.
The Japanese were defeated, Islam hasn’t. To separate the two when it comes to ideology and the citizens within the Ummah in the borders the West has designated as Afghanistan is a mistake. Afghanistan is not a country, but more of a left over territorial non-allocation in the greater war against the Infidel which has yet to be defined as what lands will be controlled by who in the future caliphate.
We in the West have defined borders through economical reasons bred through the necessity of territorial acquisition, which has eventually brought about republics and democracy. In Islam, borders do not mean the same. More likely, territorial recognition is drawn through sectarian and tribal necessity, such as the shia – sunni violence we see in Iraq today.
Occupying Afghanistan and bringing them within the fold of civilization presupposes they were already civilized, and they are not, nor will their culture allow such events and transformations to occur without radical change we went through enlightenment. Without such a change, expecting a leap to modernity by the Afghans is forlorn.
I propose you actually attend one of these CASC events. Plenty of cvilized Afghans are sure to show up.
I have been exposed to the Taqiyya a government sanctioned Afghan in preparation for my tour. You can read about it in Dispatches 7.3 Parts 1 through 7 starting here:
http://mooseandsquirrel.ca/2010/03/18/03:00/dispatch-7-3-multicultural-sensitivity-part-1/
As for attending any CASC, I’ve been far too busy getting ready to head over. Other than that, my charity is local, but my politics are global.
As I write this, the number is up to 146, and your relativistic comparison with this asymmetric War on Terror to conventional battles fought in WWII betrays your lack of comprehension regarding what the real enemy is. I briefly outlined this under the heading, “The Rudderless Mission Agenda Will Enable Islamic Extremism to Prevail” in Dispatch 10: The Claw is Back – (Final) Part 6 at: http://mooseandsquirrel.ca/2010/05/14/08:20/dispatch-10-the-claw-is-back-%e2%80%93-final-part-6/
But this simple number, now that it is 146, says nothing of the thousands who have been maimed and injured. And it says nothing of the thousands more who will or suffer now of PTSD. The total casualty count will not be known until long after we pull out. The suffering of the families who have lost or are dealing with injured personnel will never be fully known.
This is a war which must be waged on Islam itself. I notice in later comments you compare the brief flirtation with western styles within Islamic countries. These Islamic nations have not been besieged by Islamic revolution, they have been robbed of an evolution of culture which would have made Islam irrelevant. What has been occurring in Islam has been ideologically fueled mission by the closest observers of Mohammed’s sura’s and hadiths, those who claim to be Sunnah, and by following religiously sanctioned practices, have imposed their will and have shaped the Islamic paradise we see today.
Western practices represent abandoning Islam, and he who abandons his religion, kill them, for they are apostates. Any charity other than Zakat will be seen as a Crusader influence by the growing number of what you would call extremists, where I would just call them deeply religious; for everything they do is sanctioned by the Quran and found in the Hadiths.
There is just no way to reconcile with this type of fanaticism as it is both political and religious in a culture where both are practiced as one ideology: Islam.
“Come on, buddy, you know better than that. That sounds like something a liberal would say.”
Adrian, I mean educating the young Muslims already here, not those in foreign Countries. We have to offset the effects of the radical Imams who preach in Mosques right here in Canada,or we’ll wind up with more like the Toronto 18,and next time they may not be such a bunch of amateurs,
I am all for fighting a war where our troops are given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to win, but our boys are fighting with one hand tied behind their backs, and it’s our left wing MSM and politicians doing the tying.
Put a Winston Churchill in charge of Canada’s government, and a General Patton in charge of the troops,and I’d say stay until we’ve WON, but there ‘s no f***ing sense fighting a holding action with no sign of relief.
I have two cousins and two nephews currently in the Forces,two have served tours of duty in Afghanistan. I don’t agree with your remark,”143 is nothing”. If it’s the kids I used to throw the ball for when they were little, it’s WAY too goddamned many.
Statistics are made of people,and I don’t want one of mine,or anyone else’s killed for the sake of “staying the course”,when there’s no feasible end to the mission.
I wasn’t sure how to, as there are so many approaches, both personal and as part of the community, but I concur with your statement on the numbers. Every number, each and every one of them, affects us differently. For some, we’ve stopped going to the ramp ceremonies because of the melancholy it brings. Mission to do, and years before, or maybe never, before we can enjoy a good war flick.
I’m not trying to downplay the sacrifices, but I still think 143 soldiers has been a small price to pay in a war. Historically speaking it’s practically a “safe” war. If I had to choose between invading Normandy and touring in Kandahar I’m pretty sure I know what I’d pick.
But I still don’t see the sense in blaming the left, the MSM, and the politicians for your own decision to break faith with those who want to succeed.
There’s no sense “having faith” if it’s already been proven there is no god . The government’s will to succeed is being thwarted by a combination of left wing politicians and the MSM,there’s no sense trying to avoid that reality.
They’ve created an atmosphere of failure for the mission,and I believe those who still “have faith” in the mission are denying the obvious.
I’d still take Normandy,because we would still be rescuing civilized Countries from the hands of a maniacal dictator, and after we defeat their armies we can rebuild their Countries back into civilized productive industrial Nations, just like they were before.
Those who “want to succeed” are being blind to the realities of the conflict,and repeat “stay the course” when in the real world there’s no hope of success.
You can’t compare this tribal society to post war Germany or Japan,which were developed Countries led astray by militarist leaders.
In the end,after huge costs,and minor losses,to those who don’t have friends and relatives in the fray,what will the net result be?
I suggest that even if the Taliban and Al-Qaeda were to vanish from the face of the Earth,the Country would be back to it’s savage tribal ways within a few years anyway.
The hope of creating a stable democratic Country is a pipe dream, and not worth the expenditure in lives and money. This isn’t a Germany,but a third world backwater that is destined to stay exactly that long after we leave.
There’s a thing called ” cutting your losses” and it’s time to do that in Afghanistan. I’ll change my mind, as I said earlier, the day we elect a Churchill to the Prime Minister’s office, and he appoints a Patton to head the Canadian Forces.
Until that day,I will believe we have given enough to Afghanistan, and it’s time to come home.
Before I say anything, I ask you to read this. It’s evidence that regardless of what happens, we’ve made a difference in the country:
http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/05/13/OutOfCellars/
Just because there’s an atmosphere of failure about the mission doesn’t make it so. And just because people think it’s a failure now, doesn’t mean that perception can’t change. There’s the Dutch, for instance:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/05/12/f-vp-stewart.html
I really don’t think you’re giving Afghans enough credit for their ability to become “civilized”. They’re only 30 years into a civil war, after all. If Iraq can return from the brink of hell, as it did, so can Afghanistan.
Plus, saying that Afghanistan would return to savage tribal ways is kind of ignoring the rural and urban divide. There is very much a youthful, energetic urban movement that would like nothing better than a cosmopolitan Kabul restored to pre-fundamentalist days.
In the sixties and seventies, women used to wear western dress and were very much more progressive than they are now. So was Iran, Syria, Iraq, and other countries that have been besieged by Islamic revolutions.
I suspect that there isn’t much I’m going to be able to say to turn around the defeatism and cynicism in the commenters’ remarks here. But while we are all entitled to our own opinions, we are not entitled to our own facts, and if facts don’t inform one’s opinion then it’s not an opinion you’ve got, but rather a blind obedience to wilful ignorance.
So here goes.
Against the argument that Afghanistan is a lost cause, we should never have gone there, we should just pull out, and so on, let’s first get straight who “we” are in that statement. “We” Canadians are part of a 60-nation agreement called the Afghanistan Compact and we are also part of the 43-nation International Security Assistance Force. The countries that devised the Afghanistan Compact include several Islamic republics, along with western democracies. This is a United Nations mission, for good or ill, and the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan includes soldiers from such places as Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and
Turkey. That’s who “we” are.
We are there to build from scratch and savagery a nation-state where there was none. Comparisons to the Second World War are foolish if they don’t take into account the decades it took to rebuild post-war Europe, and what the world is involved with in Afghanistan is primarily a reconstruction exercise, and Afghanistan was reduced to social and moral rubble even more ferociously than Europe was in the 1940s.
A lost cause and we should never have gone there? In the days before September 11, 2001, Pakistan’s ISI was still sending convoys of free supplies and armaments to Taliban training camps, which regularly produced thousands of jihadist mercenaries for assignment to the Maghreb, the Caucusus, Central Asia and Kashmir – Arabs, Algerians, Chechens, Filipinos, the lot. Al Qaida was operating openly, flush will Arab oil money. Several million Afghans were refugees, wandering the far corners of the world or rotting in refugee camps. Roughly two million Afghans had already been slaughtered in the country’s abbatoir of war, and by the summer of 2001, five million Afghans were on the brink of starvation. In the northern provinces, people were reduced to
eating grass and rats. Women were slaves. Music was banned. Even kite-flying was banned. The Taliban had shut down the UN’s polio immunization program. Aid workers, foreign doctors and UN food program officials were routinely harrassed and arrested on charges of spreading Christianity or consorting with Afghan women.
Now, millions of girls are in school. The country has a constitutional government that reserves a quarter of its parliament to women. There are a dozen universities, several dozen newspapers, radio stations and
television stations, and one in six Afghans owns a cellular phone. Five million refugees have returned. More than 80 per cent of the people have access to basic medical services. Almost all children have been immunized against polio and childhood diseases. Afghanistan is the greatest success story in the history of the UN Rural Development Program. The continent of Africa has gone backwards under tbe UN’s ministrations. Look at Haiti. Is there any enterprise of this scale anywhere in the world that has a better record of success than Afghanistan? If not Afghanistan, then where will Canada ever do any good in the world at all?
Sorry, but I cannot abide having the great victories Canadian soldiers have helped win in Afghanistan so breezily dismissed here. I won’t have it.
There are about a dozen public opinion polls of which I am aware that have been conducted across Afghanistan that show that the vast majority of Afghans want “us” to be there. The Afghans we have canvassed are especially keen on Canada playing a greater leadership role in the international effort, not a diminished role. If we don’t “stay the course,” believe me, others will. Iran, for one. Try to imagine what the consequences will be if we leave the last leg to the Khomeinists in alliance with the Hanafists out of Pakistan. That is hardly what our soldiers died for.
As for the “troops out” position, we’ve tried that already, twice, and that’s the main reason we’re still struggling in Afghanistan. It started with Donald Rumsfeld’s “we don’t do nation-building” doctrine. Afghans wanted more foreign troops in their country, not fewer troops. The world didn’t listen.
Here’s what happened: Roughly 850 Canadian troops were deployed to Kandahar between February and August of 2002. They were engaged in a variety of combat situations, including a major three week “combat” operation that ended March 18 of that year. Then we left Afghanistan. We came home. We returned in August, 2003, to Kabul, where we engaged in a variety of non-combat roles and activities, certainly nothing resembling a “counterinsurgency” or “combat mission” of any description. The Afghan Women’s Network began to mobilize across Afghanistan, begging ISAF to extend the rule of law throughout the country; the world listened, various international commitments were hammered down and even Hamid Karzai, “the mayor of Kabul” got on board. Under Paul Martin – not Stephen Harper – in November of 2005, Camp Julien, outside Kabul, was shut down, and Canada headed south to take control of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team. It was not until February of 2006 that “Operation Archer” put Canada in the lead for security within the Kandahar PRT’s jurisdiction. It was not until September 2006 that Canadian Forces engaged in a full-bore combat operation, called Operation Medusa – the mythical “George Bush style counterinsurgency warfighting combat mission” we always hear about. Canada held Kandahar. As a 2007 British House of Commons committee on defence made plain: “If Kandahar fell, and it was reasonably close run last year, it did not matter how well the Dutch did in Uruzgan or how well the British did in Helmand. Their two provinces would also, as night followed day, have failed, because we would have lost the consent of the Pashtun people because of the totemic importance of Kandahar.”
And the world would have lost Afghanistan again. But Afghanistan was not lost, but saved, and I will not have that Canadian victory lost to memory, either. I won’t have it.
Obama got elected, he’s flooding 30,000 soldiers into the south, and everything has changed. Canada’s battle group is worn out and ready to home. That’s fine by us. But our work is not done. The key thing is, do we want to remain a key player in building a democratic Afghanistan where kids are allowed to go to school and women are allowed to go to work, or do want to squander everything we’ve invested there?
Read CASC’s “Keeping Our Promises” report. It sets out where we stand. We’re winning, slowly but surely. But we have miles to go before we sleep, so what we’re saying to our fellow Canadians is: Honour the memory of the dead. Buck up and bloody well put your back into it.
Thanks Terry, fantastic post.
I’ve said it, and I’ll say it again, without addressing the real threat, the real cause behind the learned helplessness of Afghans, the enabler of misogyny and polygamy, the allowance of violence towards women, the superiority of self over all others without debate, the cry of creating victims through free speech and education, that threat being Islam, we, and me deploying soon, is a waste of time.
Terry, you can say what you want, but the polls here at home don’t reflect it, the talk amongst the troops, not the “tow the line” officers, but those of us who do the real work, know it’s a waste of time, and the fact Roto 12 is the last and that we ARE pulling out, proves it’s been a waste.
CASC can post all the progress they want, but since your post, as gas attacks continue at girls schools, reformist minded Jirga leaders are assassinated, the summer season of attacks escalate on Kabul and at my soon to be home for 9 months at the airfield in Kandahar, the only progress I see are more visible targets for the Talibs.
You have to ask yourself, if Afghans truly were able to contemplate and even want real change, then why is it the Taliban still get shelter among the locals? Exactly who’s hearts and minds are we really winning over? Apparently not the ones who give a damn about Kuffar lives or Infidel Crusader occupiers who are just there to help.
And as the Brits announce an early pull out as well, where are the oil rich, and not so oil rich, OIC members and their troops to help stem the tide of insanity for their Muslim brothers? Oh that’s right, their funding and arming the very insurgents we’re fighting.
And where were the scores of Afghan Canadians, or their Muslim brothers, lining up to join the CF early in our effort to help the cause in Afghanistan for which our mostly non-Muslim forces fight? Having spent the last 5 years in the training system training newbies, I can tell you they’re not even scratching 0.1%. Just where are all the Canadian Muslims bucking up and putting their backs into it? (rhet)
When we can’t even win the war at home in dealing with the fact that we are in Dar al-Harb, how can we expect to win in Dar al-Islam?
I’m going to support my comrades in their mission, and for that I don’t need to believe in the mission, just follow orders and do my job the best I can.
Thats a very good post Mr Glavin.Once again Canadians hold the line while the rest of the world plays catch up.
“And the world would have lost Afghanistan again. But Afghanistan was not lost, but saved, and I will not have that Canadian victory lost to memory, either. I won’t have it.”
Neither will i.We help the Afghans here and abroad.
“Against the argument that Afghanistan is a lost cause, we should never have gone there, we should just pull out,”
If you’re referring to my comments,Terry,I never said that.Certainly we should have gone there,and defeated the Taliban.I just don’t believe we have to stay a hundred years.
, “we are not entitled to our own facts, and if facts don’t inform one’s opinion then it’s not an opinion you’ve got, but rather a blind obedience to wilful ignorance.”
So, you as a professional journalist,obviously have access to sources better than I or the average person, so link to the source of the “facts” ,and let us peruse them.
,rather than the usual ad hominem attack,”cynicism and defeatism”.
I could use the “eternal optimist” attack in reference to your side, but won’t. I’m interested in FACTS too,and can only form an opinion based on what I believe are “FACTS”. I have no control over the persons who report the “facts”,so have to take them at their word.
My sources are the websites,Small Dead Animals, and Cjunk,mainly,and Christie Blatchford’s columns. The other MSM I simply don’t trust as they seem only to report on the negative aspects of the war.
It was at SDA I read a report a few months ago,by Michael Yon,held out by SDA to be one of the most reliable sources for real information on Afghanistan. Yon stated that we would probably have to remain in Afghanistan for one hundred years, and that is where I converted to the “2011″ side.
I wasn’t aware that “Now, millions of girls are in school”. Thousands?
Nor did I at any time “breezily dismiss” the efforts of anyone, UN workers,troops,Afghan government forces,or anyone else.
I am one of the most ardent proponents of the military you will meet anywhere,and never ,ever,have I said anything negative about the men and women who serve in the Forces. I grew up in a military family,and have nothing but respect for the military.
I will give our soldiers the benefit of the doubt 100%,and the “detainee” issue being flogged by the left infuriates me.
My point is,and please read my words,don’t go by YOUR inferences, we have lost 140 solders in an action where I do not see victory as a possible conclusion. I know that statistically that’s a small number, but NOT to the families of those doing the fighting.
We may very well be making inroads in Kabul, and I applaud the efforts of those doing the work, but the countryside still seems to be in the hands of the Taliban and the tribal mentality.
I do not see Afghanistan ever becoming the liberal secular democracy so many seem to worship. Because of that,I don’t want to continue to waste Canadian lives and talent to secure another corrupt
dictatorship in another third world Country.
Honor the dead? Of course I do, and I also honour the living by not wanting them placed in a position where they
can’t fight to their full capabilities.
As I’ve said repeatedly, give me a Patton in charge, with a clear mandate to win the war without interference, and I’ll support staying there until it’s done. And it won’t take one hundred years!
“Buck up”? I don’t have to buck up, and neither do you or any of us safely back here in Canada. It’s the soldiers in the field who have to maintain their morale, and I wonder how in hell they do it when there’s so many politicians and media against them.
Every mission has a beginning,and has to have an end,and as I said earlier,it’s time to end this one. The Afghan people have to move up and take responsibility for their own safety,we can’t and shouldn’t do it for 100 years. Afghanistan is NOT our Mother Country,it’s just another of a hundred or more disastrous places on the planet.
I have no problem with keeping all the
non-combat assistance personnel in the Country to help them rebuild,but the Afghans have to defend themselves. If Karzai can’t find the support to field a credible and effective defence force then find someone who can.
Defeatist? Not bloody likely! But I, unlike some,don’t agree with sacrificing the lives our our fine young people forever,for the sake of saying, “we stayed the course”.