Canada's Muddled Afghan Mission

This is from antiwar.com. The quotes from the Manley report are not all that opaque although it is filled with a lot of rhetorical flatulence about Canadian values etc. It is clear enough that we are staying in Kandahar until 2011 and that of necessity we will be involved in combat. It is certain that we will have more heroes returned in caskets to military honors. It is clear that we will continue to be loyal allies of U.S. imperialism.

Canada's Muddled Afghan Mission

by Neil Kitson
Canada should have a federal election. The most urgent issue is Afghanistan, and the fundamental question is whether Canadians want to be governed by politicians interested in honesty and clarity, or by those who prefer focus groups and public relations. (Canadian soldiers exposed to "explosively formed penetrators" might have their own priorities.)

Afghanistan has cost about 80 Canadian lives and a lot of money. There's no end in sight, the Liberals have no discernible position, and the Conservative government says we're there so that little girls can go to school without fear. The truth: the world forgot about Afghanistan after 1989 (apart from the admirable Ottawa Convention), the country is still impoverished, Canadian involvement there is made up on the back of an envelope Rick Hillier got from the Pentagon, and nobody has a clue how to end this disaster.

We have recently had a "debate" in the House of Commons about the Afghanistan "mission," a debate conspicuously lacking all the right questions, namely: What are we doing there? What is the goal? Why is it worth Canadian soldiers' lives when other NATO countries don't believe the whole enterprise is worth dying for, whatever that enterprise is? The "debate" is in fact about when "it" will end, whatever "it" is. The Liberals started "it," Harper's pushing "it," Hillier's ready to die for "it," but nobody knows what "it" is.

The official, legal reason for any NATO country being in Afghanistan is the "collective right of self-defense" – we're making the world safe from terrorism; no more bin Ladens in Tora Bora plotting the end of civilization as we know it – the United Nations having "sanctioned" the operation under Article VII of the UN Charter. Give me a break. The Air India terrorist bombing of 1985 cost as many lives relative to Canada's population as 9/11 did relative to the United States', many warnings before that attack were ignored by the government, and some of the perpetrators are probably still living in Surrey, British Columbia, but Canadian politicians were far less hysterical in their response to that atrocity.

Furthermore, the Canadian government's pronouncements about the Afghan mission are models of opacity; for example, the Manley Report:

"The Panel proposes a new and more comprehensive Canadian strategy for Afghanistan – a strategy that honors the sacrifices Canadians have already made in Afghanistan, serves Canadian interests, gives expression to Canadian values, and corresponds realistically to Canada's capacity. These Recommendations are rooted in the logic of our preceding observations and assessments. The adoption of these Recommendations would commit Canada to a more coherent diplomatic engagement in the international partnership working for Afghanistan's security, better governance, and development. It would reorient Canada's military mission in Afghanistan more systematically from combat to the intensified training of the Afghan army and police. And it would improve the impact of Canada's civilian aid to the Afghan people."

Somebody show me a tribal map of Afghanistan that makes sense of the "Afghan National Army" and the "Afghan National Police." As George Orwell said:

"This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of WORDS chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of PHRASES tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house."

Then there's Thucydides:

"Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defense. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries."

Canada needs an honest debate about Afghanistan, in real words that have real meaning.