"A Short Rant On Harper, Afghanistan, And Pathetic Progressives"

Further to this post, here's an excellent piece by Brian Platt at his The Canada-Afghanistan Blog:

Okay. The Harper interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN that everyone is having a hissy fit about.



First of all, the media reports buried the lede, or missed it all together for a sensational headline such as "Afghan Insurgency Will Never Be Defeated: Harper".

A subheadline in the Globe and Mail captured the real story of the Harper interview: "But Harper doesn't rule out sending more troops or extending the Canadian combat commitment beyond 2011 deadline". Stupidly, Harper stated this so that everything depended on how the Americans asked us, but still: he made it clear that if there was a good strategy in place, he would consider keeping soldiers there. That's the news. (And, it seems to me, another flip-flop.)

I don't know why Harper doesn't just say this: Canada has made a commitment to Afghans that we will help train their army and police, and to aid in building up good governance and democracy. Canada made this commitment because we believe it is important for Canadians, for Afghans, and for global stability. We will not abandon this promise.

Instead, he chose to emphasis that Canada won't defeat the insurgency on its own; Afghans will have to.

Well, duh.

Is there anything new about the notion that the only long-term solution for Afghanistan is to build up Afghan institutions so they can eventually do the work themselves? No! This has long been the view of every policy-maker in the United Nations, NATO, the Karzai government, and yes, even in Washington.

The bulk of our work in Afghanistan is training the Afghans to take over. This is OLD NEWS.

The funny thing is that for the most part, Harper spoke quite well during the interview. His leadership on Afghanistan usually infuriates me. Here, I agreed with most of what he said. The problem was the way he phrased it. He's been the Prime Minister for three years. Did he not anticipate how the media was going to pick up the "we will not defeat the insurgency" line?

The fact that the headlines coming out of this interview are so disastrous simply confirms what most Canadians already knew: Stephen Harper, whatever his other merits as a politician, is completely and utterly clueless on how to manage public relations.

But you know what really pisses me off? This sort of drivel on the left, exemplified so perfectly by Dr. Dawg's response to Harper's interview, which I paraphrase as: "Ha ha! Harper admitted we're losing! The Taliban are winning! Take that, Terry Glavin!"

Anyone who considers themselves a "progessive blogger" should stand firmly and proudly for a stable, democratic state in Afghanistan, and focus their efforts on how to get there. Dawg represents the flaccid left, the ones who write off Afghanistan as a "snake pit" and recommend immediate withdrawal. Dawg's solution for Afghanistan: "Bring 'em home, Steve."

Dawg asserts that 70% of Afghanistan is under the control of the Taliban (this is highly questionable, but we'll save that for another time), and links to an article which concludes that the international community must stay in Afghanistan. As with his politics, Dawg gets a little lazy when it comes to finding links.

Pathetic.

The standard trope among these types is that there is no difference between the handful of warlords the Americans hired to fight the Taliban, and the Taliban themselves. The difference is huge: the warlords are criminals, and will eventually be weeded out as democracy matures in Afghanistan; the Taliban are footsoldiers of a totalitarian, far-right ideology. If you can't recognize this, you're no progessive.

Tooryalai Wesa, the current governor of Kandahar, was living in Vancouver until three months ago. He earned his Ph.D. at UBC on adult education. He's written a master's thesis on how the Soviets destroyed Afghanistan's agriculture. He organized the Afghan Film Festival here. Is he a warlord? Is he one of the snakes? Or is he one of the vast number of Afghans who would like to see their country governed responsibly?

Dawg and the rest of the flaccid left have no answer to this. They have no solutions but withdrawal. They profess their horror about Afghan warlords, and advocate abandoning Afghanistan to the warlords.

They are progressives who advocate the oppostion of progression. They are...pathetic.

Remember who these people are and what they say. Remember how they claim themselves as leftists while insisting that we end the UN-sanctioned nation-building project in Afghanistan. Years from now, when Afghanistan emerges as a stable democracy, remind them of their words. Remind them how they abandon any pretense of leftist principles as soon as the Americans or soldiers are involved, or God forbid: American soldiers.

They are no progressives.

Meanwhile the Globe and Mail publishes a solid editorial; one only wishes its reporters and headline writers were as reasonable, rather than seemingly obsessed with "Gotcha!":

When even modest goals are ambitious

Update: From Terry Glavin (he's all over the radio):

A Hundred Flowers Bloom, A Hundred Schools Of Thought Contend

Mr Glavin really lets it out in the final three paragraphs.