Afstan: Good sense in the Toronto Star/Silliness from M. Dion

Richard Gwyn puts things clearly:

...
The issue is whether Canadians really want to turn into isolationists.

The starkness of this issue is that it snuck up on us suddenly. For a couple of decades, we've had the luxury of allowing ourselves to believe we were making the world a better place by combining peacekeeping and dollops of foreign aid.

In Afghanistan, only one credible alternative exists to our continuing to fight the insurgency. It's to accept that we are ready to make what the UN secretary-general called "a mistake of historic proportions."

The mistake wouldn't be for us to quit Afghanistan without looking back because we could shift the blame to NATO. It would be for us to become an isolationist nation.

On the other hand Liberal leader Stéphane Dion has just revealed his party's latest position:

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion presented amendments today to the Conservative motion on the Afghanistan mission but said his party had not ruled out the possibility of finding common ground.

The amendments call for Canada's mission to change, which would include an end to combat by February 2009, as scheduled...

He said the Liberals would support a continuation of Canada's military presence in Afghanistan until February 2011 if the following three conditions are met:

* NATO must secure troops to rotate into Kandahar to allow Canadian troops to be deployed pursuant to the mission priorities training and reconstruction;

* The government must secure medium helicopter lift and high performance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; and,

* The Government of Canada must immediately notify NATO that Canada will end its military presence in Kandahar as of Feb. 1, 2011 and as of that date, the deployment of the Canadian Forces troops out of Kandahar will start as soon as possible, so that it will have been completed by July 1, 2011...

Three simple questions:

1) What country will want to send troops to Kandahar to assume the "combat" aspects of the mission if we pull out of them? Moreover, the Manley panel said a new NATO battle group of some 1,000 troops is needed to augment the CF's battle group of the same size. The plain idea is roughly to double the combat capability in the area; M. Dion's position is directly contrary to the point of the Manley recommendation.

2) How will Canadian soldiers feel if they are serving alongside NATO comrades, allowed to fight properly when they are not? Bound by caveats, contrary to M. Dion's denial that the Liberal restrictions are in fact caveats (like those placed on, e.g., German troops in the north--see near end at link).

3) How will Afghans feel about their Canadian comrades training them but not allowed to go on combat operations with them? Their morale will hardly be helped.

M. Dion also said it would be up to the Canadian military actually to devise the detailed rules of engagement to implement the operational constraints the Liberals would place on the mission. That would put the CF leadership in a terrible, almost unresolvable, bind--coming up with ROEs that best serve the safety of our troops without being able to take the initiative against the enemy in a war zone. But maybe M. Dion is willing to approve ROEs that would permit such action, in which case his whole stance is meaningless pap.

Update: A topic thread at Milnet.ca; this comment is excellent.