Pincer movement

Richard Johnson, in his latest blog entry at the National Post's "A Kandahar Journal," lays out two threats to our Afghan mission in an emotionally wrenching way.

One gets the sense from this passage that Johnson was simply too exhausted couch his thoughts in more diplomatic language, and I'm glad:

The remaining journalists had been pretty much stuck here at KAF after the six soldiers were killed. Trapped here partly by the logistics of finding space on a convoy as we near the handover to the Quebec Regiment, but mostly held here by a media monster back in Canada. A monster with a gaping maw for bad news, waiting to be fed every detail on the tragedy. Who, when, what, where and why? Then, how did this happen? Then, who is to blame? Then, the panel of experts, and the death toll statistics. The story fills the papers and news segments for days before finally waning after the ramp ceremony when the bodies of the fallen arrive home to their families. The repetitive sameness of the formula irks me, and yet it is right and fitting that we should pay homage to the fallen as the nation they represent. I just feel as a nation we should pay them a little more homage when they are alive. [Babbler's bold]

As always, sketches litter his posts; after all, that's why he embedded with the CF in the first place. But in this post, Johnson visits the base hospital, and discovers Aziz, a six-year-old boy, lying in a bed there:

A month ago, on the day I arrived into Kandahar, Aziz was shot twice through the abdomen by coalition forces during a skirmish with the Taliban. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was caught in the crossfire. His life was saved by the same machinery of war that almost took it.

Aziz has had a tempestuous month since then. He has had multiple surgeries and complications from those surgeries that have taken him close to death a number of times. He has become very frail, his muscles have atrophied and his eyes have sunk deep into his head. Still he manages to smile and give a thumbs up to the nurses.

If you have children, and especially if you have a six-year-old boy like I do, Johnson's drawings and description of Aziz have your eyes awash, your gut tight with projected worry, and your mind racing and recoiling with thoughts of "there but for the grace of God go I."

Public opinion is our Achilles heel: both Afghans' and ours. Our media hurts Canadian will, and Afghans like Aziz and his father caught in the terrifying grind of conflict hurts theirs. We need to deal with both more effectively.