Royal Canadian Dragoons, Bravo Squadron, Corporal Judd Walsh mans the front gate of Patrol Base Marianne using a 50 caliber machine gun attached to a Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV). Photo credit: Master Corporal Matthew McGregor
Despite the myriad sources of information from which to draw in order to write a column that has a grain of truth to it, it would appear that the usual suspects from the usual media sources insist on getting it wrong. You can hardly blame them. Well, actually you can, but it will hardly help. At this point, people are merely going to believe what they want to believe, and truth be damned. When it comes to Afghanistan, has it ever been any different?
Thomas Walkom, in particular, seems to get it wrong the most frequently. This rather pathetic self-flagellation of Canadians throwing their hands up in the air and making excuses that nothing else could have been done, is as depressing as their inability to get basic facts correct. Journalists are treating this fluid battle with ever-changing dynamics as something static, as though everybody has morphed into Francis Fukuyama, mourning the end of history. Pakistan capturing half the Taliban leadership in the past month? Barely a whisper.
It’s certainly easier to report on a story if you have a prearranged view on what’s actually happening. The evolution of the detainee story is a prime example. What began as little more than hearsay from Amir Attaran in the CBC, became a report in the Canadian Press, which became a fact in the minds of the official opposition in the House of Commons, as Jack Layton and Ujjal Dosanjh asked ridiculous questions about secret spies, torture, and rendition. The latter word, as I mentioned before, being technically incorrect by definition alone.
The question is, what would make the critics of the treatment of captured detainees happy? It’s as though people actually expect that we can fight a battle against the Taliban, who abide by no rules of warfare, wear no uniforms, and respect no international laws, without ever making a mistake. It’s already disturbing enough that people seem more concerned about the treatment of men who are fighting for a way of life considered barbaric by just about everybody who isn’t an Islamic Fundamentalist, than they are for the women or children used as human meat shields in the Taliban quest to outlast our resolve. But to ignore these crimes, while sifting through every prison, poring through every report, to attempt to find one instance of injustice that might undermine our moral cause, is quite simply disgusting.
As Bruce writes on his blog:
So if we accept that the Afghan justice system was or is in no state to receive our detainees in anything like a just or efficient fashion, we are certainly justified in looking around for alternatives. The alternative the Americans came up with was American-run detention in Bagram, and we can see how well that’s worked out for them. I suppose a sort of Timurid approach of refusing to take any prisoners at all, ever, could be an option: not sure how well that would go over at home, though. Not really many other alternatives than those, though. Take them home in our kit bags? Soylent Green? What?
Good questions. What would make people happy? Take no prisoners? Inhuman. Hand prisoners over to their own legal authority? Inhumane. Build our own prisons? Well, then you get the complaints that it’s too expensive, or it’s an extra-judicial gulag, or it’s a sign of colonialism. And before long you can be sure Amir Attaran would find a document which proved that a detainee slipped in the shower and cut himself, and we’d be back in permanent scandal mode anyway.
The truth is that there’s probably nothing good enough for the critics of the Afghan war. Trying to appease people who are already dealing in bad faith is pointless. Trying to sanitize warfare is a comfortable illusion of a generation of Canadians who have been raised to believe that our military exists to “keep the peace”. They would be happy if we were deployed to sit in Kandahar Air Field with blue helmets and United Nations’ flags signifying the 1% of the province officially safe from the reach of the Taliban. That way, when the Taliban is massacring people 100 metres from the Air Field, we can cite our rules of engagement directive of non-interference, and never get our hands dirty. Sure, people will die. But at least we won’t run the risk of being the ones who handed over the Taliban fighter that wound up falling down in the shower.
That’s also not a .50; it’s a C6 7.62mm machine gun, also known variously as the FN-MAG, M240 (US version), or L7 (UK version).
Ya and that is a Trojan Maximum,ribbed on the end.also known as a condom,probably a sheik over in Afghanyland
“It’s certainly easier to report on a story if you have a prearranged view on what’s actually happening. The evolution of the detainee story is a prime example.”
I’m guessing the irony of this statement completely eludes you.
I think your comment about what the alternatives to handing over prisoners is something too many people don’t think about. Handing over prisoners is simply the best option.
At the same time though, I can’t really slot myself in with the “he slipped in the shower” crowd or the “Canadian war criminals” crowd. It’s AFGHANISTAN. Of course the Afghan guards are abusing some of the prisoners we hand over. It’s ridiculously naive to think that they’re always treating the prisoners properly. So the government’s position is ridiculous. At the same time, it’s moronic to think that the Canadian military has the ability to stop all prisoner abuse by the Afghan authorities. It’s similarly ridiculous to jump from “prisoner was handed over and now we have reports of abuse” to “the Conservatives have a secret plan to have the Afghans torture people for us”. The opposition’s hysteria on the subject is ridiculous.
Perhaps it’s just hubris, but I tend to think my view can’t be that unusual.
This seems to be a pattern with parliament these days. The Conservatives screw up and hand the opposition a stick to beat them with and yet somehow the opposition finds a way to beat up their own credibility at the same time.
Issachar, the issue is not that Canadians hand over Taliban, and there is abuse taking place (I am sure that it does happen..) The charge is that every prisoner handed over has been subjected to torture.
The left (Gayle included) assume that as fact and the starting point of any discussion.
The problem is worse than just the accusation that every prisoner is tortured. The problem is that the critics out there say that Canada is culpable for every indirect or incidental episode of torture, if that prisoner was somehow captured by Canadian soldiers.
This makes Canada responsible for the penal system in Afghanistan, a ridiculous, preposterous level of oversight.
The truth is that there’s probably nothing good enough for the critics of the Afghan war.
Sure there is, if McHarperBushHitler was out of office and a Liberal in charge the media would totally ignore this story as they did in 2005. Its only a story if it harms Harper, thats how the Canadian media works.
I wrote the word Bushitler on Macleans and it got auto-deleted because of the word “shit” in the middle.
If there was a LPC administration, do you think Mr. Attaran would have come forward to criticize his buddy Ignatieff? Not on your life, he wouldn’t want to rock the patronage boat. Would Mr. Colvin have been as eager to testify against a Liberal Administration? No way; he’d probably be in the running to move up the DFAIT food chain. This ‘scandal’ is basically an attempt to criminalize Canadian participation in Coalition warfare. All this crap about ‘we don’t blame the troops, we blame the government’ is an open admission to the people of Canada that this is JUST POLITICS and thus no one innocently slimed like members of the CF should hold any grudges against the LPC/Media complex.
The problem I have with the government’s protestations is that they’ve been stonewalling without any good reason.
Oh, but it’s “security reasons”!
Even if that’s true, it doesn’t justify the government’s stonewalling. They’re now having the documents examined by a former supreme court justice. So one has to ask, WHY NOT DO THIS MONTHS AGO?
Did it only occur to them recently that Canadians might view a former supreme court judge as trustworthy and he’s probably not a Taliban spy? If so, they’re morons who couldn’t govern an elementary school classroom properly. I find it much more likely that they’re simply stonewalling for the sake of stonewalling.
I didn’t vote for this kind of crap.
My problem Isch, is that its only ‘stonewalling’ if the media determines it is. If the media doesn’t have any interest or worse feigns ignorance (see John Edwards) the Canadian people are just as duped. This kind of faux outrage is judiciously parceled out by the media who shouldn’t but definitely DO have a rooting interest. This is not only unfair, its dishonest.
Fair enough Joe, but what are you going to do?
Complaining that the media doesn’t agree with you is a fairly common refrain, but you can’t force CTV or the National Post report on something they don’t want to.
And whatever the media says, the Conservatives were stonewalling. Without any good reason.