Afstan: A long run thing/Media spin

Doug Beazley of Sun Media points out what we should keep in mind about the mission:

So let's not fool ourselves. This mission will either last another 10 years, or it will end tomorrow. If we leave Afghanistan early, it won't be because our mission has "failed," or because we feel we'd be better off delivering aid.

That will just be the cover story.

If we leave, it will be due to our impatience, our inner divisions, a loss of faith in NATO, in multilateralism, in ourselves. We'll be retreating from our status as a global power, back into our "little Canada" cocoon. And we'll be abandoning people who had every right to expect better of us.

The senior Canadian officer in Afstan also thinks it will be a long, hard slog.

Nato forces will have to remain in Afghanistan for years if they are to defeat the Taliban, one of the coalition's top generals in the country has warned.

Brig Gen Tim Grant, the commander of Canadian forces in Afghanistan, said that it would take time to win over the people living in the Taliban's former heartlands in the south of the country.

And he renewed the call from military commanders in Afghanistan for more troops to be sent, warning that he did not have enough soldiers to hold the ground that they captured during military operations...

Our soldiers seem to have an understanding. Whereas some in our media do not (a story by David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen).

Recruits don't want combat jobs

But the story is not about actual recruits:

The report, which was produced in September, presented the results of a public opinion survey of almost 2,000 people conducted to determine the level of interest in joining the Canadian Forces...

No "recruits" there. Just a poll. An accurate headline would have been "80% surveyed not interested in joining military".

One in five surveyed said they are at least somewhat interested in joining the Canadian Forces, down slightly from 2000, the report pointed out. About 13 per cent said they may visit a recruiting centre in the next year.

What else would one expect? "Half those surveyed want to join the CF"? And at any time, in any place, how many people want to join the poor bloody infantry? But the media must needs spin. In spite of this at the tail end of Mr Pugliese's story:

For the last four years the Canadian Forces has met or surpassed its recruitment goals, according to the Defence Department...

And then there's this (from the Toronto Star):

More than 5,800 recruits joined the regular force between April 2005 and March 2006, exceeding the target by 6 per cent [emphasis added]. Heading into 2007, the target is higher as the government tries to expand its 62,000-member regular force by 13,000, and the reserves by 10,000. Recruiting is ahead of where it was this time last year, says Capt. Holly-Anne Brown, spokesperson for the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group, headquartered at Borden...