Prime minister grumpy about Afstan

Mr Harper speaks to Maclean's. Not a very spirited approach and ignores the fact that the Germans were educated, and had a lot of experience in running an effective state and a modern economy--hardly a realistic or fair comparison. Plus the Marshall aid that dwarfs the assistance to Afstan. Moreover Germany was not "fully restored within four years". Bosnia or Somalia would be better comparisons.

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On Afghanistan, the dominant defence and foreign policy file, Harper again looks ahead to tough choices. Rather than talking up the military mission in Kandahar as an inspiring undertaking, he used the year-end sit-down to vent frustration at slow progress in building a self-sufficient Afghan government. “You know, the United Nations and our allies will have been in Afghanistan 10 years in 2011. For God’s sakes, Germany was basically fully restored within four years; Germany joined NATO ten years after it was conquered.”

He does not seem to be willing to accept anything like an open-ended commitment in central Asia. “To say that Afghanistan would need decades and decades just to do the basic security work, I think is pushing credibility,” Harper said. “Not just pushing the patience of the Canadian public and the military, pushing the credibility of the effort. A sovereign government must, at some point, say, ‘We can actually deal with this on a day-to-day basis. We can be responsible.’”

Still, he signalled he doesn’t expect the panel he set up to advise him on Afghanistan, chaired by former Liberal Cabinet heavyweight John Manley, to suggest Canada try to withdraw anytime very soon. (Manley’s panel is expected to deliver its advice early in 2008.) The whole point of the panel, he said, was to avoid “some very wrong decision here that would hurt our security, hurt our international standing with our allies, and that could, I think, do permanent damage to the Canadian Forces.” What Harper seems to be hoping for is a plan for remaining an active military player in Afghanistan, while demanding the Afghan government somehow move toward standing on its own...

I would agree that if the Afghans can't take on much of the security load within two/three years then it will be hard for many countries to stay seriously committed.

It seems to me however that Mr Harper is losing his own commitment to the Afghan mission; maybe he never really was that serious about it, imagining rather along the lines of Paul Martin that it wouldn't be that big a deal and would provide domestic political (remember that first visit to Kandahar in March 2006?) and international diplomatic rewards. The reality has proved rather different and difficult. Perhaps that's why the prime minister is so ineffective at "selling" the mission.