A rchive Date
[ 19-09-2006 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Kaufmann_Bill/2006/09/11/1825085.html
Don't blame Jack - Reality can be so unpatriotic when it comes to Afghanistan
By Bill Kaufmann
Mon, September 11, 2006
That Jack Layton - the more he talks, the more he sounds like the Cheney administration and their chums.
The timing's suspicious. Only a month before Oktoberfest in Kitchener, it's said that Jack served up another Munich.
This time it was coddling the Taliban, who have been drafted as enemy No. 1 for Canadians.
In a world teeming with despots, it's those Taliban creeps alone who've long aspired to occupy our country and prevent girls from attending K-12 from Corner Brook to Comox.
But can Layton's verbiage properly be considered appeasement, given the Cheney gang's well-known dealings with the Taliban well into 2001?
That was when U.S. funding of the Taliban and negotiations - yes, negotiations - with them broke off due to a squabble over a petroleum pipeline some Americans wanted to push through Afghanistan.
It must have been before the Taliban were "Islamofascists" or before their medieval misogyny suddenly mattered.
We know they're incapable of appeasement; only Layton with that moustache fits the Neville Chamberlain mould.
And those Taliban members who've come over to our side?
I'll bet dollars to donuts some of them entered into discussions with the Canadian military - you know, negotiations.
It might have even saved Canadian lives, but who needs appeasement?
No, far better to have our politicians preening in camo, sloganeering and playing soldier while the sight of flag-draped caskets returning from Afghanistan lose their novelty.
They've locked and loaded the chutzpah to accuse the mission's critics of playing politics with an occupation that's killing and maiming Canadians, one they've extended for two years.
Better political face-saving than "appeasement."
Pakistan just granted amnesty to pro-Taliban militants in their midst they couldn't defeat. More appeasement.
Increasingly unpopular Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the guy our troops are dying to defend, has cut appeasement-type deals with war lords and drug runners as the only way to keep his country intact.
And Karzai doubtless knows he'll have to court the Taliban. For years, Karzai overtures have been made to the Taliban, who have essentially re-taken Afghanistan's South.
Since appeasement appears to know no bounds, it must be Layton's bring-em-home message that offends.
Stephen Harper will tell us we're fighting a resistance movement in Afghanistan to prevent a repeat of 9/11 after the terrorists have dispersed all over the map to do their scheming. Hopefully, our future military budgets can cover all this terrorist real estate. But for now, propping up one side of a long, dismal Afghan civil war is about all that military budget can handle.
Don't look now - there's Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor relishing the thought of expanding Canada's war into Pakistan because our Pakistani allies, shall we say delicately, go rather easy on the Taliban. Quadruple the reserves.
The Afghan civil war has expanded into a struggle against occupation and Canadians are coming to realize our troops will be under attack as long as they're there.
It's mainly because our side, those weaker Afghan allies, are held in contempt by their people as corrupt, incompetent and abusive puppets of foreign occupiers. Now two think-tanks that have spent years observing Afghanistan are telling us what you won't hear from Peter MacKay.
It's that the failure to nation-build and provide humanitarian assistance, widespread bombing of civilians and the massive fleecing of aid dollars has energized the Taliban.
"The foreigners came here and said they would help the poor people, and they only spend money on their military operations," one of the reports quotes an Afghan commander in Kandahar. "The poor people are poorer now than when the Taliban were the government. We would be fools to continue to believe their lies."
Little noticed was an admission last Thursday by O'Connor - sounding every bit as defeatist as Jack Layton - that the Taliban can never be eliminated at the very same time NATO began pleading for more troops.
We hear from Canadian soldiers of how those devious Afghans appear to love them during the day but after night falls, all bets are off. Where have we heard all this before?
Canada's soldiers are trapped on a bloody treadmill George W. Bush set in motion but wouldn't or couldn't stop and what thanks do we receive? U.S. high explosives on our troops.
Reality can be so unpatriotic.
Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc. All rights reserved
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