CDS General Hillier on Afstan

From an interview in the Ottawa Citizen:

...
ON NEGOTIATION INSTEAD
OF FIGHTING:

"I think you have to draw a line. Yes, you want to negotiate, discuss and without violence. But when you get to some of those men -- you know something? It's not about religion. It's not about extreme views.

"It always comes down to this: Men want power -- power to make money, power to enforce or inflict their views on others and power to remain immune from responsibility for, and accountability for, their actions. They take patriotism to the extreme of nationalism. They take religion to extremist views.

"In Prijedor, Bosnia (where in 2000 he took command of NATO's Multinational Division (Southwest) in Bosnia-Herzegovina), we had a chief of public security, a mayor and a chief of police. And they were the equivalent of having Paul Bernardo as your mayor, Clifford Olson as your chief of public security and Karla Homolka as your chief of police. How can you deal with people like that in a dialogue and get them to actually help the people they're responsible for -- as opposed to abusing, torturing and in many cases, killing them?

"Some Canadians don't understand the fact you can't just go and talk to people in Southern Afghanistan and say 'OK, now put your guns down and let's all come to an agreement that we're actually going to build some schools and we're actually going to have some boys and girls go to school and we're actually going to choose who's going to lead us here.'

"People start shooting and killing folks and children, women, older people or men --they don't care -- and at some point in time, you're just going to have to say 'We're not going to accept this'."

ON PEACEKEEPING:

"The peacekeeping concept works superbly in many cases -- not all. It worked when it was state-versus-state that had come to some politically-negotiated agreement. They now needed assistance in helping separate military forces to implement that agreement.

"The world has changed. Now we very seldom have that. What we have are stateless threats based on terrorist groups who can operate either across several countries, regions or worldwide."

ON PREVENTION:

"Fighting is necessary to prevent terrorism from coming here. It's clear. The Taliban, when they ran Afghanistan, provided a haven for terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda, but not exclusively al-Qaeda.

"There's the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, among others, that operated in the region. They brought recruits from other parts of the world to Afghanistan, trained them, fed them. And from there, they did their planning for terrorist operations. The nexus of the plan on 11 September to attack the World Trade Center came out of Afghanistan and the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We are trying to help Afghans to build a country that no longer is a haven for that kind of terrorism, is no longer a chaotic country where drug lords can actually make billions of dollars by exporting drugs that disrupt western societies and other regions."

ON A CANADIAN WITHDRAWAL:

"I would simply say why we're doing these things, and why some other countries should step up.

"First of all, this is what the soldiers see, and they tell me this.

"1: We are a founding member of NATO and NATO says this is a No. 1 mission.

"2: There are other NATO countries with us in Afghanistan, fully engaged in operations against the Taliban. The United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, the Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Romania, and Poland are (in the south) with us [note the countries so rarely mentioned in Canada - MC].

"Yes, I would like to see more from other NATO nations in southern Afghanistan, but you also have got to put that into context of what they're doing elsewhere around the world.

"3: We're there to help the government of Afghanistan who asked for this help because they can't see their way to rebuild their country without some kind of security assistance until they build their own armed forces -- which we are helping them to do.

"So if we're not going to respond with help to a country that desperately needs it, what are we going to do?

"4: We have been a huge proponent of the responsibility to protect. And words in the case of Afghanistan just won't do it at the present time. So, are we not going to be stepping up to put actions to words?

"Lastly, we're a G8 nation. One of our young commanders told me recently in Edmonton: 'Sir, we're not trying to become one of the big boys. We are one of the big boys. Now we should just start acting like it. We are a G8 nation that has responsibilities.'..

Communicating.

Update: Terry Glavin expresses his "regards to Le Tendence Torchiste." Next, Albert Camus?