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.

Attacks up in Afghanistan

Can we set aside the nostrum that this means that the insurgency is in its "last throes" and accept that it's a bad thing for Afghanistan and for our troops there.

Two Seats Over

Sadly we have lost another soldier. Right now I'm in Sooke, BC, even further removed from Afghanistan, physically speaking, than when I'm at home. On the flight out here there was a soldier just a couple seats away from me. Generally Canadian Forces travel in green - at least when I've seen them out and about, this guy was in khaki though. I wondered where he had been, was he coming back from the great Over There. I don't know. The people we lose are for the most part only as close as another anonymous air traveler. I suppose that depersonalizes war, we can feel bad for a soldier when they die, but we are not left with that dull ache that their families will probably never fully exorcise. Instead we see our men and women in uniform as, at best, someone in the same general vicinity as we are.

Delaying the Inevitable

Here's another bit of tiresome boilerplate on why we ought to support the Afghan mission indefinitely. Once again "the left" is accused of not caring about the Afghans. In the world of the mission's supporters "care" = indefinite, unconditional support for Canadian military presence in the worst part of Afghanistan. Nothing I've read about Afghanistan makes me think that we can fix it in five, ten, or twenty years. Others have tried, lots of them. I'm sure that our troops are well-intentioned and I hope they've been well trained and well equipped, but in the end I wonder if this mission is akin to having them stand on the beach and tell the tide to go back. This is not Germany in 1946 or something. Until I see a great deal of evidence to the contrary, I reserve the right to be skeptical about this mission's chances as it's currently configured.

Richard Gwyn's False Choice

In a column yesterday, Richard Gwyn claimed that the real choice over the Afghan mission was over whether we become an "isolationist nation" or not. I'm tired of being presented with this mission in these sorts of terms. Opposing, or even questioning this mission has more to do with practical realities than it does with whether or not someone is an internationalist or not. It would be nice to help Afghanistan but I remain convinced that we simply cannot make a lasting, meaningful difference. When the last of Rick Hillier's fancy heavy lift transport aircraft take off from the Kandahar airstrip I have no good reason to believe that the country will not deteriorate again and almost immediately. Maybe I'm too cynical, but this is what I get from looking at the history both of Afghanistan and of decolonization.

Israel Gets a Free Ride

When it comes to the lives of Canadian soldiers, it appears that they are (rightly) worth a great deal when in Afghanistan, but not so much when they are in Lebanon and bothersome to the Israeli Defense Forces. The story that's come out the past couple of days seems to indicate that the UN observation post where Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener was stationed was reporting Israeli war crimes. As for the investigation, Israel has refused to cooperate - despite Harper's assurances to the contrary.

Why is it that Israel can kill our troops with impunity? No one is called to account, no is made to testify. Harper has deliberately shifted our Middle East policy to be more explicitly pro-Israel, and what do we get for it? Nothing. No matter where one's sympathies lie in the Middle East, surely one should expect some kind of accountability for this kind of action.

Harper Stands Up for Boeing

It looks like we are signing another contract with Boeing, this time for a bunch of helicopters. I remember when these sorts of purchased were actually scrutinized. Apparently now the Defence department just buys stuff and we'd all better shut up. Because of the war. Or something.

Is Harper out of touch with the military?

The new talking point about the cessation of Afghan prisoner transfers emanating from the PMO is that the government didn't know they had ended. For the past couple of months this had been an ongoing issue with Canada's role in Afghanistan. In this sort of situation, don't you think that someone in the government might want to phone up the military ask what's going on with prisoner transfers.

Is this government a secretive, partisan operation, or is it just unfathomably incompetent?

Being Played for Fools in Kandahar

It appears as though Canada is having difficulty finding another NATO country to take our place in the dangerous Kandahar province. Predictably, right-wingers think our only course is to play the sucker for NATO and stay in the worst part of a troubled country in the vague hope that will modernize an ancient tribal society in 5-10 years. They tout the "stay the course" line - one wonders if the insignia of Canada's hawks ought to be the captain of the Titanic - unprepared to play hardball over this. Ask some questions you guys:
Should anyone be occupying Afghanistan?
Will it result in any long-term positive social change?
If so, why should Canada be stuck in the worst part of this job?
I thought we had matured as a nation past the point where some imperial idiot like Douglas Haig could simply order us to be cannon fodder. Now some people ensconced the National Post's editorial office would have us volunteer.

Mammoliti calls for Martial Law in Toronto

For those of you who don't follow Toronto politics, Giorgio Mammoliti is pretty much the worst of all possible councillors. A former NDPer-turned right-wing whacko, he hasn't seen an office expense he didn't enjoy (including a limo ride to nowhere).

In Mammoliti's latest exposition of his general vileness, he has proposed calling in the military to round up alleged gang members whilst dispensing with any kind of due process. Seriously, here's a sample:

"This idea of asking the federal government to help out came up awhile back. It’s not the first time I’ve been saying it. You know, it comes out of desperation, I think, in a community that has been promised by all three levels of government that the shooting will stop and governments are doing whatever they can to help. It’s been years and it’s not subsiding at all. It’s getting worse. It’s not getting better. It’s gang members that are doing it. They’re holding communities hostage. [People] are afraid to come out of their homes and they want something done immediately. This community, they would like to see these gang members taken off the streets and held indefinitely, if possible. The only people that have that authority are the federal government and the army quite frankly."

Meanwhile, the chief of police, Bill Blair has quite sensibly told Mammoliti to shut the hell up. The gang problem in Toronto is bad enough, but if New York City could survive without the army in the 1980s, then we can manage here.

Why can't we drive this LAV all the way to a majority?

Scott has posted on the utterly craven reasoning behind Conservative military spending with a choice quote from a National Post story:

“Some Conservatives have also complained the funding the government has directed for new defence equipment has not translated into additional support for the party at the polls.”

Boo-fucking-hoo. I thought we needed all this stuff to fight a war. If the high-profile purchases of things like Boeing C-17s were really attempts to buy votes, it's really far more expensive than Chretien's custom golf balls. This quote above is enough for someone to do a really careful audit of every military expenditure approved under the Conservatives. The military is not a slush fund and our soldiers are not campaign signs.

Losing Ourselves in Afghanistan

It appears now that some of the detainees that we turned over to the Afghans have disappeared. We are participating in disappearances? Why? I know what the stock answers will be, all the business about this being a "new kind of enemy" or a "clash of civilizations" or the "greatest threat we face."

Bullshit.

We somehow managed to fight World War II without participating in disappearances. What are we doing now? Maybe if you're a neocon crackpot like Jonah Goldberg and you view Pinochet as a hero, this is no big deal, but I've always wanted to believe that Canada was trying to hold itself to a higher standard. Remember as far as we know, none of the disappeared have been convicted of anything, let alone charged. We have no way of knowing whether they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm not sure how much of this kind of "help" the Afghan people are prepared to tolerate.

More Harper's Afghan Mission Panel

You can find the goods on these people here. They are all tied to Harper's party, explicit hawks, or both. Moreover none of them appear to have any specific background on central Asia (yes John Manley was a Foreign Affairs but that's broader than what I have in mind), they are all white, mostly male, mostly Anglophone, none appear to have much (or any) military experience and all appear to be middle-aged or older.

So Harper's panel is a group of older white (mostly) guys with no specific experience in Afghan affairs or the military but who are almost all on record as supporting the mission. It's a wonder Harper didn't appoint himself to the committee.

Our Own MacArthur

Maclean's (hardly some pinko anti-war magazine) has an interesting bit on how Rick Hillier pushed to have us take on the worst assignment in Afghanistan (so it wasn't a result of Liberal dithering that we got this assignment) in order to pursue his personal agenda. A sample:

"He wanted a deployment that would get Canada deeper and deeper into the most troubled part of Afghanistan. It was heavy lifting. And it was an initiative that would impress the Pentagon and even George Bush."

Oh, so we didn't do this out of concern for the Afghans or because we felt some grand moral obligations. We did this so that we could make friends at the Pentagon! Why would we do that?

"A new consensus, led by DND, was rapidly emerging in Ottawa: Canada, and in particular the Canadian Forces, needed to do something significant for Washington -- something that the Pentagon really valued -- to compensate for the refusal to participate in BMD."

In other words the DND felt bad for the Pentagon. The last time I checked we were a sovereign state that does not need to impress the Pentagon. How about just telling the Pentagon that BMD isn't particularly effective? I mean it can shoot down missiles that it's told to shoot down in advance, I still wouldn't bet on it in a real scenario.

But this wasn't the only reason that Hillier put Kandahar out there as our mission:

"Canadians would be justifiably proud of their government and their military for undertaking a difficult and important assignment."

Oh swell, a self-esteem boost. The proudest I have been of our government in the past decade was when Jean Chretien declined to participate in the morass of Iraq. We took a principled stance and went against traditional allies like the US and UK. And we were right. It is one thing to undertake a "difficult" assignment, I fear what we have in Afghanistan is an impossible assignment exacerbated by the US fixation with the opium trade.

Oh Yeah, They Love Us

I mentioned the other day how The Torch insists that the Afghans really, really want us there based on the comments of four of them. Well today it turns out that 500 of them went out into the streets and told us to go home. They were shouting nice things like "death to Canada" in outrage over some local religious leaders being killed.

Are we supposed to believe that all these people in the street are all hardcore Taliban? Or maybe they are mad about growing civilian casualties? Of course the pro-war types in this country will insist that this is why we need to stay - they hate us, we have to win them over. Sigh.

The Torch Tortures Logic

In an effort to prop up the mission in Afghanistan and somehow prove it isn't an imperial enterprise, the pro-war Torch insists that we listen to ordinary Afghans on the NATO mission there. After quotes from four honest-to-God Afghans, The Torch rests its case. In a country of 30 million they found four people who like ISAF. Game, set, and match.

Okay, calm down, I'm using a literary device here known as sarcasm. What's really silly is the conclusion that the Torch draws from these four possibly representative Afghans:

"They're asking for our help. That's all they want: a hand up. It baffles me why so many Canadians want to deny them that."

The question that this reasoning begs is whether we are even able to offer the Afghans anything. It doesn't take a great many of them remaining sympathetic to the Taliban to really undo our efforts such as they are. Remaining sympathetic to the Taliban need not be a religious position, it could be interwoven with Pashtun tribal identity. Additionally we risk alienating a great many opium farmers by going along with the American fusion of the war on drugs with the war on terror.

There are so many ways that we can get this badly, badly wrong, there are so many things that we do not know about how to deal with Afghanistan that the idea that this mission is akin to lending the Afghans (or at least four of them) a cup of sugar is absurd. I don't wish to "deny" my "help" to anyone, I'm just not convinced that we have any real, longterm help to offer, I'm not convinced that girls won't be kicked out of school as soon as we leave, I'm not convinced that bans on beard-shaving won't be reinstated. Do we really think that a few years of NATO will undo centuries of tribal culture amongst subsistence farmers in a harsh, remote region?

Rick Hillier Mucking Up Armed Forces

According to the National Post Hillier's reorganization projects for the military are taking personnel out of important frontline roles and creating needless duplication. I know that a great number of conservatives and Conservatives like how Hillier talks tough and so on, but if he can't manage the overall structure of the military he should get out. His title is General, not Trash-Talker.

Actually Supporting the Troops

One of my pet peeves is meaningless wankery in the name of "supporting the troops." Here is a much better way to support them. Make sure that reservists get to keep their jobs when they come back from a tour. If you support the troops, sign the petition. Our troops deserve more than a ribbon, they deserve a paycheque.

What about the rest of our history?

Harper has made the rather banal statement that Conservatives are "unashamed" of Canada's military heritage. Scott and Dylan have pointed out that the implication of this statement is that the rest of us Canadians are somehow ashamed.

What about the rest of Canada's history? I wonder what the Conservatives are ashamed of if they crack open a Canadian history book. I'm guessing probably the Charter as well as anything else done when Pierre Trudeau was PM.

Harper doesn't like the Trudeau vision of Canada very much. Or rather, I suspect that he prefers the view advanced by people like Jack Granatstein that Canada ought to return a more "drum and trumpet" view of its history. Certainly, if Harper wants to set up the Conservatives as the default government of the country, rebranding this country as a militaristic one and setting up the military as sacrosanct to our national identity would serve to help him.

I have no problem with remembering our soldiers, or with war memorials, school trips to Vimy Ridge, and all the rest. Hell, I wear a poppy every November too. The problem though is the creation of a sort of national myth. By saying that Conservatives are "unashamed" one of the other implications that Harper is making is that there is nothing shameful at all in our military history.

We ought to learn about the staggering incompetence of Douglas Haig or the way in which the Allies botched the Dieppe raid. Can we have an honest discussion about the (in)effectiveness of firebombing Dresden? If we bring up these matters are we ashamed of Canada's military heritage?