Why Canada is at war

Christie Blatchford of the Globe rises again to the occasion (full text not officially online).

The bleeding was barely stopped when the bleating began.

On the day of Canada's most appalling losses yet in Afghanistan -- four soldiers killed in three separate but linked attacks and 10 injured -- it took but an hour for the open-line radio talk shows in Toronto to fill up with the cries of those who would pull the plug on the mission there, yank the troops home immediately, have the nation revert to its mythical, if cherished, peacekeeping role and go back to that sterling foreign policy of keeping fingers crossed...

The common denominator is thuggery -- whether it is the Taliban yesterday gleefully claiming credit for the spate of attacks that also left 21 Afghan civilians dead and 13 wounded, or Hezbollah launching rockets from private homes, or Mr. Fatah being labelled an apostate by those who know full well the peril that engenders -- and a nihilism so naked it is stunning.

The rocket-propelled grenade attack that yesterday left three Canadians dead, for instance, was launched from a school. In most civilized parts of the planet, schools are places of learning, places for children, places of peace; to the Taliban, and to all those who would keep their fellow Muslims in perpetual poverty and ignorance so that they might be made into martyrs, schools are buildings to be burned down, trashed, defiled and turned into launch pads by those who, if they understand nothing else about the West, understand that Western soldiers, with their regard for education and soft spot for children, must struggle on some level to seriously regard the school as a likely spot to set up an ambush...

The first time I was in Kandahar, last spring, two would-be suicide bombers blew themselves up prematurely in a graveyard: They were from Pakistan, as documents and cellphones retrieved from their bodies proved. When I was in Kandahar last month, in what has become known as the Battle of Pashmul and was also the site of yesterday's attacks, one of the arrested fighters was a Chechen man.

What business does a Chechen have trying to kill Canadians in Afghanistan? Oh yes, I forgot: The glory of Islam...

My point is, the war is on. Canada did not declare it, but it has come to our shores as surely as it came to Manhattan's five years ago. Our soldiers are dying for it, in Afghanistan, but they are also fighting for Canadians.

The least we can do -- and we do, in this country, prefer to do the least -- is stiffen our collective resolve, face up to the truth, and recognize that the soldiers' terrible sacrifice is in our name.