Canadian Political Issues

If Mr. Layton wants Canadian troops out of Afghanistan, he should say just that.

He should say that it doesn't serve Canadian interests to be there, that the deaths of Canadian soldiers, therefore, serve no point and that the battlefield of Afghanistan, which will decide who rules in that country, Karzai or Taliban, democracy or rabid fundamentalism, has no meaning or significance for us Canadians.

He should be clear that when his party says it supports the troops, it means that cancelling the mission those troops are engaged upon is the only honest way that party sees of supporting them.

But what, up until now, Mr. Layton and his party are saying is that we should and that we shouldn't. That we should do good works in Afghanistan, build schools and roads and help the newly elected government. But that Canadian troops must not on any account contribute to creating conditions where building schools and roads and helping a deeply wounded country is a real possibility. And, please, chatter about negotiations with the Taliban and collective peace-seeking is just so much verbal flannel.

What part shall we negotiate with the Taliban? You must drop the ban on girls going to school, but can you keep the part about stoning homosexuals?

The same breath cannot carry two opposing messages, that we must leave and that we should help.

That's fudge, and poor fudge at that. If the troops leave, they leave, and with them leaves any of the soft contributions we might make to Afghanistan and its people.

There's also much verbal flutter about a made-in-Canada policy and Stephen Harper as Bush's latest puppet or that this is a violation of Canada's self-vision as a peacekeeping nation.

If the Afghanistan mission is to be debated, let it be debated for what it is: Either that we owe a duty to that country and it citizens, that will cost the lives of some of our soldiers to pay it and that it is honourable for Canada to assist a country ravaged by terror and war towards a better life, or that none of these things are true, that the mission is a misguided adventure, that Canadian soldiers should not be shedding blood a world away from Canada and that whatever the future holds for Afghanistan is none of our Canadian business.

Going to the other side of the platter, Stephen Harper has at least an equal burden. The caskets from Afghanistan are coming home and the profound cost of this mission is witnessed on the nightly newscasts, but from the very beginning of this mission, from the long ago days of Mr. Chrétien through Mr. Martin's term as prime minister to this present moment, a clear, full, articulated case for the mission has not been made.

We've had everything else but the full statement of why the mission is important to us as Canadians, how it relates to our national interest and values and a full description of what we hope to see as a result of our troops being there.

• Why are we in Afghanistan?
• Why does it count?
• Why is it worth the cost of Canadian lives?

# posted by Jared @ 11:17 AM