Afstan: Two Canadian views (and one American's thoughts)

Short excerpts from columns today:

1) Dan Leger, Halifax Chronicle Herald:

Kandahar: why Canada’s war is all but over

If Canada and its allies can’t defeat a few thousand guerrillas, what does that say about the West’s moral and ethical stand toward terrorism and extremism? What kind of message does it send to the Taliban and its allies around the world?..

The Taliban know they must fear and respect our soldiers. The tragedy is, they have little to fear from our citizens.

2) Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star:

Will Canada stand with its allies?

It has become obvious that only a handful of nations are in for the long haul, which will be very long indeed. Will Canada stand with its traditional allies and do the same? The answer to that question is about us, not anyone else.

The Americans will stay because Afghanistan, despite the U.S.-led coalition that deposed the Taliban in 2001, is primarily their war. No Democratic presidential candidate has said a word about retreating from Afghanistan; quite the opposite, even as they rail over Iraq. The British, as Prime Minister Gordon Brown vowed last week, will not abandon Helmand province, however protracted the mission – and they twice suffered defeat on Afghan soil in the 19th century. The Dutch have given notice [well, not quite yet - MC] they will hang in beyond August of 2008, the deadline originally set, doing far more conventional fighting in Uruzgan than had been anticipated [and don't forget the Aussies--see bottom at this link].

Canada is ... thinking about it, Prime Minister Stephen Harper indicating in the throne speech he would prefer troops to remain beyond 2009, at least till 2011, possibly in an exclusive training capacity...

3) More about what the Taliban were up to in 2001:

People still speak of the Buddhas as if they were there. The Buddhas are visited and debated. A “Buddha road” just opened. It boasts the first paved surface in Afghanistan’s majestic central highlands and stretches all of a half-mile.

But the 1,500-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan are gone, of course, replaced by two gashes in the reddish-brown cliff. They were destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban in their quest to rid the country of the “gods of the infidels.” The fanatical soldiers of Islam blasted the ancient treasures to fragments...

...The visitor is drawn into the void as if summoned, not by vacancy, but by the towering Buddhas themselves.

Yet they are in pieces. Nasir Mudabir, 29, a director of the site, ushered me into a makeshift shelter where boxes with sandstone and plaster fragments from the two Buddhas are kept. Metal remnants of the bombs that destroyed them are preserved separately: they are jagged where the stones are smooth to the touch.

Why keep evidence of the barbarians’ arsenal? “It’s part of the story,” Mudabir said. “It’s history, bad or good. Instead of going forward, we went backward.”..

Hazara refugees, who have returned from Iran after Afghanistan’s decades of conflict, eke out an existence in Taliban-despoiled caves once covered with bright murals.

That this is a holy place, sought out by Buddhist pilgrims over the centuries, is written in light, form and stone.

The smaller, eastern Buddha, known locally as “Shamama,” stood 125 feet tall and has now been dated to the year 507. The larger, called “Salsal,” rose to 180 feet. It was constructed in 554. One theory holds that the builders were dissatisfied with the first and erected its neighbor in the pursuit of perfection...

...What began here in March 2001 has spread. The Taliban is back, sort of, seeping across the Pakistani border in a campaign fed by an Internet-borne jihadist message. The Web is a force multiplier for any guerrilla movement.

This was the Afghan burning of the books. The Nazis burned Brecht. The Taliban, then sheltering Osama bin Laden, bombarded the “un-Islamic” Buddhas. The burning presaged war. The destruction presaged 9/11: two Buddhas, two towers.

Heinrich Heine noted that “When they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings.” When Buddhas buckle, people will be crushed...

Before. And then... Now this. Such mindless hatred--including from some of us.