Sovereignty? They don't need any stinkin' sovereignty!

Denis Coderre, official neo-colonialist of the Liberal Party of Canada:

And later, outside the Commons, Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre said he believed that all people captured by NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan - and even those captured by the Afghans themselves - should be protected in the same way as those the Canadians take into custody.

Do they not make a muzzle in that man's size?

Look, you want to protect Canadian troops by ensuring the Afghans treat Canadian-captured detainees well enough to pass some contrived threshold in a legal text? Fine. While I don't believe prison conditions should top the reconstruction priority list as some do, at some point they will have to be addressed along with the other serious weaknesses in the Afghan justice system. There's just so much to work on in Afghanistan that it's a tomayto-tomahto situation for me.

But hey - improve prison standards if that's what knots your knickers. (Me? I'm more about potable drinking water, basic medical care, literacy and practical education, and alleviating poverty by growing the economy. Call me a hard-hearted bastard if you will.)

The minute you start poking your finger into an Afghan chest and saying "We require you to run your country the way we tell you to," however, you've stopped being a valued and welcome guest helping them regain their feet, and started on your way to becoming an unwelcome occupying force.

You want a fast and easy way to endanger our troops and undermine all the great hearts-and-minds victories they've been winning in Kandahar province? Dictating to the Afghan government how they should conduct their internal affairs on their own soil will do it.

Stephane Dion needs to pull back on this idiot's leash, and hard.

Update: Chris Selley, writing from the bunker at Macleans, buttresses my point in his critique of the latest Jim Travers rabbit-hole vacation column:

We're not quite sure why the Afghan government would or should accept "Western judicial values" - and we note that this unlikely-to-be-met test and the consequences of failure Travers outlines would lead rather conveniently to an outright withdrawal of Canadian troops.

Those goalposts keep moving further and further back.

One wonders just how quickly these critics who demand instant perfection in the Afghan mission would respond if the government suddenly applied the same standard to, say, climate change: "Incremental progress is out the window! Only absolutely flawless fixes will be acceptable! And if we can't achieve perfection instantly, we'll pull out of the effort entirely - take our ball and go home!"

Time for Travers and Coderre to hammer out the finer points of their plan over a nice, hot cup of SHUT THE HELL UP.

Upperdate: In fact, Michael Byers - who still isn't being identified as the partisan NDP operative that he is - finally comes right out and says it: the greater picture of rebuilding Afghanistan bit by painful bit doesn't matter in the slightest to him and his adherents. All that matters is their one pet issue, and the leverage it can gain them:

University of British Columbia law professor Michael Byers, who made headlines with his suggestion that post-transer abuse could leave Canadian officials guilty of war crimes, takes a different point of view. He contends that Canada has "very strong leverage" with the Karzai government.

"The government of Afghanistan desperately wants Canadian troops to remain in Kandahar province," Byers tells Macleans.ca - noting that it was reportedly the Afghani government that approached Canada with the intention of improving the agreement.

"We are in an extremely strong position, vis-a-vis Afghanistan, on this issue," he says. "After all, we have the ultimate potential sanction, which is to withdraw from the mission completely. I think the Afghan government realizes now just how important this issue is to Canadians, and therefore to the continuation of the Canadian role in their country." [Babbler's highlight]

The ultimatum they would deliver to the Afghans couldn't be clearer: we're fully prepared to abandon you if you don't do exactly as we tell you, and do it now.

Welcome to the more moderate segment of the Canadian anti-war movement.

Laughing-it-update: Aaron Wherry made me laugh this morning, with this fine passage:

"In a recent national poll, I obtained twice the level of support of the leader of the opposition," O'Connor proclaimed to hearty applause from the government benches. "The reason that I obtained that support is because he continues to show poor judgment. Recently he suggested that we would bring the Taliban back to Canada, maybe on a Taliban sponsorship program. But of course his worst example of judgment is picking a buffoon as the defence critic."

Responded the Buffoon from Bourassa, Denis Coderre: "Maybe Mr. Speaker, it takes one to recognize another one."

And so, finally, we had reached consensus. After weeks of debate over a fundamental question of human rights and modern warfare, all sides were agreed: Denis Coderre is a first-rate goof. Somewhere, Shane Doan's lawyer smiled.