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As the families of nine Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan gathered in Kandahar over Easter to pay tribute to the fallen, strategic thinkers in Ottawa were speculating on what the next military mission should be.
According to reports, the families of fallen soldiers were openly hoping that all Canadian troops are not withdrawn from Afghanistan next year – that at least a contingent of fighting soldiers remain to provide security for civilian aid operations, and to keep some continuity for the role our soldiers have invested in the country and its people.
If solders themselves were given a vote, they also would likely want to stay until the job is finished – or a satisfactory conclusion is in sight.
U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, pulls no punches when she hopes there’s a way our soldiers can play an active role in Afghanistan after 2011. She doesn’t just want more soldiers, she wants Canadian soldiers because after our years of being in the Kandahar region, we know the country (and the enemy) better than most.
Hillary is getting this not from politicians and commentators, but from American generals and soldiers who see what our troops do. Proof being the willingness – nay, eagerness — to have U.S. soldiers serve under Canadian command.
That is arguably the big difference between civilians and soldiers. The civilian leans towards peace at any price, the soldier wants to get the job done. Afghanistan may be increasingly unpopular at home, but it’s been a proving ground for our military. Individually, our soldiers can legitimately claim to be among the best in the world.
The more fighting that occurred in Afghanistan, the easier it was to recruit soldiers. That’s another thing that puzzles the civilian mind: the adventure of foreign missions.
Since Afghanistan, traditional “peacekeeping” has been on hold in the Canadian military. As a fighting force, our troops can scale down to peacekeeping, but it’s increasingly difficult for a purely peacekeeping force to ratchet itself up to combat.
And the primary role of soldiering is combat — if required. And while civilians may not appreciate it, when Canadian soldiers are in serious combat, they are most comfortable when their flanks are protected by other Canadian soldiers. In itself, that is testimony to high morale.
The Sun’s Kathleen Harris reported that Prof. Walter Dorn of the Royal Military College is one of many who thinks a return to peacekeeping is “long overdue.” He would like to see Canadians sent to Darfur, Haiti or Congo. This theme is echoed by UN contacts.
Are we nuts? Darfur is a cesspool and a lost cause until the homicidal regime in Sudan is brought to heel. A terrible place to send soldiers, who’ll be sacrificial pawns, yet that’s what the NDP wants.
Congo, too, is an open wound without cure. To involve our soldiers in an ongoing jungle war does no one any favors. And Haiti – now replete with billions in earthquake contributions, is likely to continue being more inept and corrupt than in the past. Haiti has always been the greatest recipient of aid money that has been a total waste.
Why Canada would send it’s small, efficient, battle-hardened troops to any of these hopeless causes defies logic and understanding.
Instead, pick a place where our troops can play a positive role – like Afghanistan, maybe.
Peter, the mission in A’stan is a non-win situtation. Time to get out.
Any particular reason why FrumForum has decided to stay completely mute on the recently released video having to do with our attack helicopters (at a distance of about a mile away, as some have calculated from the soundtrack versus the bullet patterns in the video) taking out journalists, people milling around the journalists, and subsequently people trying to rescue people who had just been shot up by the first rounds of gunfire?
It seems to me we really can’t escape the significance of that video going forward.
Or as John Cole (ironically, a conservative blogger himself at the time this massacre took place) at Balloon-Juice offered:
Excuses don’t matter to people when they see their neighbor and his daughters ripped apart by a chain gun for the crime of trying to help a person bleeding in the street. Excuses don’t console people when they see their son and their father pulverized for the crime of standing next to people who might be considered a threat. Excuses fall on deaf ears for people who watch their kid get shredded by attack helicopters for the crime of milling in the street near people carrying a gun… in a war zone. If the Rules of Engagement state that anyone simply NEAR someone carrying an AK-47 is a legitimate target, then we might as well just start carpet-bombing the entire country until no one is left alive.
Exactly what vital national interest is involved in Canada’s involvement in the Afghanistan war? I loathed Chretien, but I thank God Harper wasn’t PM when the US invaded Iraq, or we’d have been there too.
Its always time to leave in Afganistan. The Bush mess was truly spectacular, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And then the our only reason why we went, WALKED, yes lifted up his chattels, put on his sandals and OBL WALKED away from the most expensive army the world has ever known. Now we can’t even remember why we are there. We gotta go home. This isn’t even our first time in Afganistan. We got beaten in the 50s too. We have had enough of spending republicans and their surreal wars. We have had enough of the democrats who follow their policies like house cats after canned meat. Time to go. Time to go. Time to go.
Both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are sinister campaigns being conducted solely for the benefit of international bankers and war profiteers. Just as the U.S. entered World War I at the behest of J.
P. Morgan and the DuPonts.
tequilamockingbird took the words right out of my mouth. I too loathed Chretien, but his decision not to join in the Iraq War was the one thing I was actually proud of him for. If the Harper Government does decide to increase Canada’s stay in Afghanistan, this will be the first time in over 20 years that I will NOT vote Conservative. And my first vote in 1988 was for the Reform Party, so that says a lot.
The last U.S. president with no troops on foreign soil was Grover Cleveland. President Cleveland left office on March 4, 1897. For over 110 years this nation has been in the grips of international bankers and war profiteers and all we have to show for it are VA hospitals and Gold Star Mothers.
” Now we can’t even remember why we are there.”
Okay, picking a random point in history:
1) Afghanistan got invaded by the Soviet Union, at the invitation of the then-government who wanted help against the muj.
Using stealth and cunning — and some announcements by the leader of the Arabs — intelligence sources figured out who was behind the plan. They asked the Taliban to pretty please hand over the bad guy, and all would be well.
2) For any number of geopolitical reasons, other countries were against this. So many of them sent help in various forms to the muj. The US sent kazillions of dollars worth of help — all part of stopping the spread of Communism. After ten or so years, eventually, the Soviets took their ball and went home.
3) The country was in shambles. Nobody cared. Except the Afghanis, who then drifted into a horrible tit-for-tat trading of sectarian atrocities.
4) Power hates a vaccum, and people get tired of anarchy, so the Taliban came along promising some order and some godly law. Many of the Afghan people thought that sounded like a fine idea. Until the Taliban actually took over, with a little help from “the Arabs,” this group of Wahhabists who *also* helped throw out the Soviets.
5) Power also corrupts, and the Afghan people soon discovered that godly law meant stonings and beheadings and mandated beards and prohibitions against kites and songbirds and Buddhas. The UN, in a fit of magnanimity, built a very nice stadium where the Afghans could play, which was quite useful for the only real entertainment allowed — public executions.
6) Those Arab people also had a special grudge against the United States for daring to protect Saudi Arabia against Saddam Hussein. That grudge extended additionally to all Western nations, the Saudi government, and Shia Islam. So they sat around a campfire and drank chai and hatched A Plan.
7) Presently, some planes flew into some big buildings.
9) The Taliban could not/would not do this. SO!
10) The United States decided it was a pretty good policy to let other nations know that they couldn’t *harbor* people who wanted to attack the US and get off scot-free by the technicality of the attack not being a national act. Other western nations agreed, and NATO invoked Article 6, which said that an attack on one state was an attack on all of them.
11) Many people in Afghanistan were pretty happy to see the US/NATO troops. They cut their beards and blared music in the streets. But!
12) The US also invaded Iraq (the relative merits of which I’ll skip discussing). And they forgot to finish wiping out the Taliban. And they didn’t spend money in smart ways making life better for the people in Afghanistan, sort of like what happened after the Soviets left, except the military was still there.
13) Now Iraq’s adventures are winding down, for good or ill, and everybody discovers that the Taliban is on the rise again, including across the border in Pakistan — which has a fairly weak government (the husband of the murdered Bhutto who was the daughter of the executed Bhutto). This is a problem, because Pakistan is a nuclear power and home to lots of madrassahs.
That should explain why everybody’s there, and what national interests are at stake — terror attacks haven’t been limited to only the US.
Why stay?
Moral reason: because *even now* most Afghans want us to. They’re wary, and tired of conflict, but they don’t want to live under the Taliban again. Of course, they don’t want to live in perpetual chaos, either, which gives a certain urgency to getting to a stable point. Having used them and then abandoned them once, with cute little landmines littering the country, it would be lousy to do it again.
Strategic reasons: 1) Because surrender gives a big fat message of surrender to the people who’d like to kill all Westerners (and Shia, and Buddhists, and so forth). Nothing invites attack better than a perception of weakness. 2) Because Afghanistan becomes once again a failed state where it’s easy for terrorist groups to set up camp — particularly given that they already did once. 3) Because it isn’t just Afghanistan, but Pakistan, which is a nuclear power. Which could fall into the hands of those people who hate the west and Shia Islam and Buddhists and Britney Spears. 4) Because it sends a big fat message to all our nervous allies that it’s unwise to trust us.
Just as it was fairly clear at the end of Gulf War 1 that leaving Saddam in place would probably necessitate going back again, it’s fairly clear now that bailing and leaving a torn up country with no infrastructure or commerce beyond narcotrafficking will eventuate in having to return — again — and the battle then will be bloodier and have less support from regular Afghans.
There are a multitude of reasons to finish the job, which means leaving a stable government with broad support of the people, able to defend itself against miscreants and get public services and so forth moving.
The issue is more along the lines of, *can* it be done. If it can’t, there’s no point extending the bloodshed. But despite that the Taliban have made some gains, US/NATO/Afghan forces seem to be moving in more productive directions, including bypassing Karzai with rebuilding money. That it’s doomed to failure is by no means a foregone conclusion.
Okay, that was bizarre.
For some reason, my numeric 8 turned into a smiley face right when I was writing about 9/11. It wasn’t intentional, and I beg pardon for the offense.
tequilamockingbird: Exactly what vital national interest is involved in Canada’s involvement in the Afghanistan war?
The U.S. is involved in Afghanistan because of 9-11.
And the NATO Charter, to which Canada is a signatory, states that an attack on any NATO member is to be treated as an attack on all.
Canada and Europe, who assumed that meant that America would come to THEIR aid, suddenly realized after 9-11 that we would expect them to come to OUR aid.
50 years after the formation of NATO, the other shoe dropped!
Right! I agree wholeheartedly! And I supported Canada’s assistance to the US as part of NATO!
But when it became clear to one and all that the attack on Afghanistan was simply a pretext for the invasion of Iraq, and the US subcontracted the hunt for Bin Laden to the Northern Alliance and the Pakistanis, Canada and NATO should have been gone after about six months. If the 9/11 attacks had been the reason for the US action in Afghanistan, rather than a pretext for their real intention, and had the US committed half the troops and treasure they instead poured into Iraq, the combined US/NATO forces would have prevailed in short order; Al Qaida were down to about 300 ragtag fighters floundering in the snow in Tora Bora.
Six months after the invasion of Afghanistan, the other shoe was picked up again.