Who Are We? Where Are We Going?

Standing back and looking at the two big Canadian political stories in the past month – Afghan torture revelations and Copenhagen – I have been struck by how utterly changed we are in Canada. We are now one of the global foot-draggers on climate change and a country that is actively trying to cover up human rights violations (real ones, not ones that are less inconveniencing than the passport office, like Ezra Levant having to answer a couple questions one time) made by its own military. The contrast between this and Chretien’s wise decision to sit out the Gulf War in 2003 could not be greater.

Obama as Nobel Laureate

The Peace Prize? The man has done little to draw down troops in Iraq, he’s toying with increasing the troop commitment in Afghanistan, and he’s still moving very, very slowly to shut down Gitmo. Now this is not to say that it’s inconceivable that Obama will merit the Peace Prize at the end of four or eight years – the man moves slowly on everything it seems – but so far the evidence is just not there. It’s also not to say that I would support anything that the party of Beck and Palin would offer up in 2012. Obama is still probably the best choice from among the serious contenders in the 2008 election.

This award for Obama is akin to giving a promising freshman their university degree on account of their potential. Worse, I fear that this takes pressure off of Obama to get serious about shutting down the legal vacuum of Gitmo and deciding how best to extricate his country’s soldier’s from two nasty conflicts where there is little evidence that they can effect much change.

Why Afghanistan?

This post caught my attention. The argument that Jeffrey Goldberg makes is that Afghanistan isn’t really a “central front” in any kind of war on terror. (An aside, once again, why are we fighting a tactic?Using current nomenclature we should call the Cold War the “War on Missiles, Tanks, and Submarines” or something.) Anyway, my quibbles with Goldberg’s wording aside, I think he raises a salient point: Afghanistan is a place where al Qaeda could train, but most of al Qaeda’s members come from elsewhere.

What this means is that NATO is caught in a place where there was little native impulse to attack NATO countries because the preceding regime had allowed al Qaeda to hide out there. NATO troops may be able to make some temporary improvements in the lives of women, but these seem not to withstand NATO’s withdrawal from any particular area. Reforms do not extend beyond the range of NATO arms.

It should now be readily apparent that all we are doing in Afghanistan is propping up a budding dictator in Hamid Karzai while creating native anger at the West by bombing weddings and destroying the poppy crop that provides a livelihood for many farmers.

Bleak Outlook for Afghan Mission

Today we have further confirmation of the longstanding suspicions of many progressives, namely that the NATO mission in Afghanistan is likely doomed to failure. The report leaked to WaPo indicates that US Gen. McChrystal has serious doubts about the ability of NATO to overcome the Taliban insurgency. The one caveat he does give is that success (however he is defining it) could be secured by adding troops.

More troops from where?

Most NATO countries, including Canada, are lukewarm to the idea of pouring more forces into Afghanistan and the US itself still has major commitments in Iraq. In the meantime the accusations of corruption inside Afghanistan likely do little to invigorate anyone in NATO with the idea that democracy or human rights are being defended. Karzai is looking more and more like your average Western-backed pseudo-democratic puppet dictator.

We need to seriously ask what, if anything, we can do for Afghanistan.

What Context?

How often is this the case? The Fox News twits who mocked Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are now apologising, but at the same time they are pleading context. What context is needed for your remarks Greg Gutfeld? I would love to know.

Afghan Mission till 20xx?

Last night on CBC there was more talk about extending Canada’s mission in Afghanistan. Wait a sec, didn’t Harper panel of magical wizards foretell that by 2011 Afghanistan would turn into a democratic and stable society?  It’s supposed to be totally different this time since supposedly this will be a development-focused mission, but really, how are you going to do that without security. We are stuck in a war that we cannot win in a place where a sizable chunk of the population resents us.

Shorter Robert Gates

“No one has done more than Canada, now Canada should do even more.“

Never mind that neither their officers nor our officers seem to understand the significant ethnic rivalries in Afghanistan that are readily apparent from, say, reading The Kite Runner.

Who are we fighting?

While on vacation I had a chance to read Alex Abella’s Soldiers of Reason: The Rand Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire. The book itself is sometimes a haze of evolving nuclear strategies entwined with the curious personal lives of its scientists, one of whom was the basis for the title character in Dr. Strangelove:

One part that did stand out to me though was a study done by Rand on the Vietcong fighters captured by the South Vietnamese:

“[Rand consultants] emphasized that the Vietcong saw themselves as waging a war against imperialists for the independence of Vietnam. They neither were communist zealots nor were they animated, like some Asian version of Mexican Zapatistas, by a simple desire for land. They were patriots and they were in the war for the long haul… These were not roving bandits or just plain bad guys, they were men of principle who were willing to die for a cause – and unless the conditions that gave rise to their discontent changed, the guerrilla campaign would go on until they all died or the central government fell.”

To what extent does this profile resemble the Taliban in Afghanistan today? I haven’t seen a lot of study done on this topic. Yes there are lots of speeches calling them “gangsters” or “scum” but I have seen precious little on what animates them. How much of it is sheer Pashtun nationalism? How much of it is religious? I don’t know, but I would like our government to figure this one out. Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense during Vietnam) claims to this day that he had no idea that the Vietcong saw themselves primarily as patriots, and yet his government commissioned the Rand study that found just that. Does Canada already know something about what animates the Taliban. We deserve these sorts of answers.

Welcome to the Occupation

It might seem like a relief for Canada’s soldiers in Afghanistan that the US Marines are sending a contingent to southern Afghanistan. Except that the Marines have an agenda of their own there:

“General Dan McNeill, the U.S. Army officer who currently commands the 40-nation NATO coalition fighting in Afghanistan, said in an interview that he hopes Canada and other nations will adopt U.S.-style tactics and doctrines, including lengthier deployments for soldiers, harder-line opium-poppy-eradication strategies and the use of military forces in reconstruction and humanitarian work.”

Lengthier deployments? I don’t imagine a lot of our soldiers are clamouring for that. And poppy eradication? When are those drug war ideologues in the US military and government going to realize that nothing makes a farmer hate them more than the destruction of his livelihood? If you want to fight the Taliban, try to keep the main thing the main thing.

Bernier the Bumbling Imperialist

According to an article in The Toronto Star, the Afghans were going to can the governor of Kandahar until Maxime Bernier opened his big mouth. Aside from our general maltreatment of First Nations, Canada has never really chosen to act as an imperial power. If we can’t handle this sort of delicate manipulation of the local scene, that’s one more reason we shouldn’t be wasting blood and treasure in Afghanistan.