Choose your Churchill
The House debate on the Liberal motion to end the combat mission as of February, 2009, was relentlessly partisan, generally dismal in quality, and mostly ill-informed. The NDP will not support the motion (because they want the troops out ASAP, not in two years!), so the motion will fail. Mr Layton and his cohorts called for settling everything by negotiating with the Taliban.
National Defence critic Dawn Black even quoted Churchill:
Mr Ignatieff came up with this gem outside the debate itself:
The government, from what I saw, failed to hammer home the "exit strategy" that Minister of National Defence O'Connor has outlined. I cannot but wonder why.
My conclusion is that if and when the Taliban manage to kill a total of 100 Canadians the mission effectively will be over.
Update: The National Post published a letter of mine about Ms. Black on April 21.
Meanwhile, a movie that shows young Churchill in the British Army on the northwest frontier of India blazing away at Pathans with a Webley revolver. He also does battle in the Sudan. Not really the type of fellow Ms Black should be quoting admiringly, I would think (h/t to Jack MacLeod).
National Defence critic Dawn Black even quoted Churchill:
Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.Ms Black is obviously unfamiliar with what Mr Churchill said after the Munich Agreement:
Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war.When the NDP and the Bloc ran out of things to say they simply charged the government with being Bush-lackeys. Sigh.
Mr Ignatieff came up with this gem outside the debate itself:
Deputy Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said during Question Period that by February 2009, the southern Afghanistan mission will be the longest combat mission undertaken by Canada.The combat mission in southern Afghanistan, to which the Liberal motion specifically refers, will have lasted three years in February, 2009. Canadian participation in WW I lasted over four years, our participation in WW II close to six years (not that I would compare Afghanistan with those wars). Mr Ignatieff is obviously counting from our first combat mission in 2002 and ignoring the non-combat nature of the mission in Kabul from 2003 to 2005. He is not the honest and accurate man he used to be. Pity.
The government, from what I saw, failed to hammer home the "exit strategy" that Minister of National Defence O'Connor has outlined. I cannot but wonder why.
My conclusion is that if and when the Taliban manage to kill a total of 100 Canadians the mission effectively will be over.
Update: The National Post published a letter of mine about Ms. Black on April 21.
Meanwhile, a movie that shows young Churchill in the British Army on the northwest frontier of India blazing away at Pathans with a Webley revolver. He also does battle in the Sudan. Not really the type of fellow Ms Black should be quoting admiringly, I would think (h/t to Jack MacLeod).
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 5:14 p.m.
2 Comments:
I agree with your comment of the poor quality of the debate. It's also a shame as reports have it that the level of attendance was low. Given the importance of this issue to the Afghans, Canadians and international community this is not our finest hour.
I hope your statement about calling it quits when the total deaths hit 100 is wrong. I would either see us get out earlier if that is the case, or, stick it out if we have a well laid out plan success that lead us to a successful conclusion of the situation which is FULLY endorsed and committed to by the member nations of NATO.
One of the comments that really hit me hard and I felt particularly partisan (again as you mention this event was effectively a partisan digression on all sides) was Hills comment (going from memory here):
"If you don't support the mission in Afghanistan you don't support the Canadian troops"
This is a cheap shot. Clear rational discussion on public policy should not be stifled. This appears ominously similar to the 'you’re either with us or ag'n us' line by from Bush. This situation is much more complicated and intricate than that and attitudes like that do not help anyone and I see them as an attempt to prevent healthy dissent.
Ms Black's Churchill quote seem to be inaccurate--from p.12 at this link:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/files/public/FinestHour122.pdf
""Nigeria and Cameroon have reached a Churchillian settlement of their border dispute, notes Prince Bola Ajibola, head of the Nigerian delegation:
“Cameroon has put in 1.25 million dollars and Nigeria 1.25 million dollars....This shows that we mean business.” Seeming to quote Churchill, Prince
Ajibola noted that by settling border problems amicably, Cameroon and Nigeria have showed that “it’s better to jaw, jaw, jaw than to war, war, war.”
This was a nice nod to Sir Winston, but the quotation, so often quoted, is not Churchill’s. Sir Martin Gilbert, speaking at our 2000 Alaska
conference on “Churchill and the Soviets” (Churchill Proceedings, 1998-2000, to be published shortly) notes: “It was during this Washington visit [June 1954] that Churchill said, in trying to persuade Congress that high-level meeting
with Russia was a good thing: ‘Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.’ Those were Churchill’s actual words. Four years later, during a visit to Australia, Harold Macmillan spoke the version usually—and wrongly—attributed to Churchill: ‘Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.’”
H/t to Mike Campbell at "Daimnation!".
http://www.damianpenny.com/comments/display/9287#132323
Mark
Ottawa
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