Louise Arbour (of whom this blog generally disapproves) looks like she’s actually on to something in the view of Terry Glavin:
As I Was Saying: Get Real.
Most recently here, which I was then pleased to find Christopher Hitchens reiterating here, Louise Arbour, former Supreme Court judge, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and currently president of the International Crisis Group, asserts in clear and unforgiving terms here:
“Shortcuts and backroom deals just won’t cut it. Instead, Canada and other NATO members must focus their efforts on reforms that can give Afghans stability, security and rule of law. More attention and resources, not less, must be focused on building governmental capacity and combatting corruption…
…Canadians must recognize that their continued engagement in Afghanistan must rest not on wishful thinking but on a policy grounded in reality.”
Thank you, Justice Arbour. You’ve just neatly summarized everything the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee has been saying [disclosure: I'm a member--MC].
A truly eclectic meeting of minds. But achieving their ends will take an awful lot of neo-imperial twisting of Afghan arms, primarily by the US. And, I suspect, at least tacit Pakistani acquiescence.
Mark
Ottawa
“How to help the Afghans…….”
Give them a bar of soap, a lice comb, tell the useless lazy, corrupt bastards to go fuck themselvers & leave.
Thank you for a well-informed, presumably Conservative, view. I await your decrying Stephen Harper for once saying Canadians did not cut and run.
And your vowing never to vote again for the types who still, however reluctantly, maintain that a Canadian military presence (with, cowardly, minimal risk–remember when our government deplored those allies who insisted on caveats on the use of their troops?) remains important.
Mark
Ottawa
“Canada and other NATO members must focus their efforts on reforms that can give Afghans stability……”
Once again the onus is on *US* to increase *OUR* efforts (and MONEY – course). There is never a demand that the Afhans actually get off thier asses and show us some improvement.
“….Louise Arbour, former Supreme Court judge….”
Whoa! What a “surprise” a Supreme Court Justice who has all the answers!
Judges! Is there anything they CAN’T do?
I hope he didn’t put himself in any danger or wear himself out sitting on his fat ass telling our guys that more of them have to get their heads blown off.
It’s not about minimal risk dick head.
Tell me where I wrote that.
It’s about the Afghans playing us for patsies while they play both sides of the fence.
We’ve worked hard. I’ve supported the mission up until now and Harper. It’s been almost 10 years and we’ve seen nothing from these scumbags.
We should have installed puppet government (we can pretend it’s democratic) and called it done.
I’ve had reasons to differ with Arbour as well, but not on this one. You wrote: “But achieving their ends will take an awful lot of neo-imperial twisting of Afghan arms, primarily by the US.”
It will require none of that. The Yanks have done quite enough neo-imperialist deal-cutting as it is. The arms that will need twisting are Yankee arms. And it will not require “Pakistani acquiescence” but rather Pakistani restraint and submission, which is work the Yanks should be attending to because the Pakistanis are America’s friends, not ours, and not Afghanistan’s. For the work that Arbour notices to be in need of doing, the Americans would be best to stay in their bases and get out of the way; it’s not work Americans have proved they can be trusted to do, especially in Afghanistan. It’s work Afghans need to do, and we need to help them do it.
How about giving the vote in Afghanistan only to women?
HEY! Am I starting to see a pattern emerging here?
“If we move the party just a little bit farther to the left then NEXT year we’ll have a majority!”
“If we stay in that Afghan toilet one more year and send them another billion then NEXT year we’ll see victory!”
I mean just because they’ve pissed away all the other money investing in their dope operation and bribing warlords doesn’t mean they’ll do it NEXT year?
Right Mark? ……. Mark?……..Mark?