Afstan: Lloyd "Softy" Axworthy doesn't want to fight/French do

The former Liberal foreign affairs minister and true believer in "soft power" doesn't like what we are doing in Afstan (full text not online).

...Led by Michael Ignatieff, Liberals ended up giving Stephen Harper enough votes to have free rein in a war-fighting effort that precludes other potentially more effective efforts to protect the people of Afghanistan and takes Canada out of the new peace-building strategy being developed at the United Nations...

Somehow this is not precluded and has escaped the Softy's gaze:

Since August 2005, a Canadian PRT [Provincial Reconstruction Team] has operated in Kandahar, where it is expected to remain until February 2007. The PRT brings together elements from the Canadian Forces (CF), Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in an integrated Canadian effort, also known as the All of Government approach...

Lloyd issues further vapourous piffle:

...Canada should begin to apply the principle of "responsibility to protect" to our mission in Afghanistan...To utilize this Canadian-sponsored R2P principle in Afghanistan would mean recalibrating our strategy away from simply adopting the counterinsurgency followed by U.S. forces and developing one that focuses much more on the protection of civilians. After all, while NATO troops are off chasing the Taliban in the hills, hundreds of schools and mosques are being attacked and their teachers and moderate imams being kidnapped or killed....

Hundreds? Precisely when NATO is in the hills? Source? In any event, if those Taliban aren't hunted from time to time they will be able cause even more damage, injury and death.

This is what UK General David Richards, in command of NATO ISAF said recently (translation):

My military forces will not only be used to defeat the Taliban, but also to assure the future of villages and communities...

That should sound good to Lloyd but he won't care in his anti-US fixation.

Update: Liberal Ted at Cerberus says it even better.

Guess who has been chasing the Taliban as part of US counterinsurgency actions for three years? French special forces, operating as an integral part of US Operation Enduring Freedom. Why are they doing this (translation)?

It is a very political decision taken directly by the president. As seen from Paris the presence of French special forces in Afghanistan is primarily considered a strong signal to the US, demonstrating France's commitment at their side in the struggle against terrorism.

An idea that would never occur to Lloyd, ever more Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc. The French have a phrase for it: raison d'état. It is also doing one's duty.

And, of course Lloyd says Canada should

reallocate resources now dedicated to war-fighting in Afghanistan to other peace-building initiatives that cry out for attention and leadership. Darfur leads the list.

H/t to Norman's Spectator for the French stories.