Afstan and Canadian political attitudes
The centre thinks that the Afghan government is not very good, thus no longer worthy of our military support. The left, especially the hard left, argues that the Afghan government is actually awful; so who cares if the Taliban retakes power? After all it's the Afghans' cultural right to truly horrrendous rule. Conservatives--and I mean with a capital "C"--sought political advantage from the war, did not properly explain it, and have since decided there is no such advantage. They now would rather take the fight to Mickey I.
All three Canadian political trends are simply unwilling to accept that casualties in some real numbers are sometimes necessary for our country to do its internationalist bit. Leave that to Uncle Sam and John Bull. And to their marines.
Moreover, don't bother about funding the Canadian Forces adequately to be a military capable of sustained combat operations in any real numbers.
And if, say, violent Islamic fundamentalism abroad really is a threat to us, to the rest of the West, and to many other people--go to the washroom since we won't pay the bill (to paraphrase John Manley in another context) for sticking around in the struggle .
Canadians love to talk the talk about being a, er, force in the world and still (delusionally) believe we are. But we will not walk the walk, nor pay the price. Not that most of the Western world is any better.
All three Canadian political trends are simply unwilling to accept that casualties in some real numbers are sometimes necessary for our country to do its internationalist bit. Leave that to Uncle Sam and John Bull. And to their marines.
Moreover, don't bother about funding the Canadian Forces adequately to be a military capable of sustained combat operations in any real numbers.
And if, say, violent Islamic fundamentalism abroad really is a threat to us, to the rest of the West, and to many other people--go to the washroom since we won't pay the bill (to paraphrase John Manley in another context) for sticking around in the struggle .
Canadians love to talk the talk about being a, er, force in the world and still (delusionally) believe we are. But we will not walk the walk, nor pay the price. Not that most of the Western world is any better.
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 9:00 p.m.
4 Comments:
All due respect Mark, I agree with the general thrust but not the specifics.
Canada and NATO will have to do a lot more if they hope to establish something like a marginally secular democratic state.
But there's no relation between, for example, the number of our casualties and the worthiness of the Afghan government. We could have sacrificed 100,000 men and the loya jirga would still have proposed the "rape law" (which was later watered down to the "starve wives that won't have sex" law).
What we should be making clear to the Afghan government is that laws so badly out of step with Western values corrode public support back home. They might win the support of local hardliners, but they lose the support of the Canadian public. At some point that corrosion will create an overwhelming unwillingness to continue. Therefore it is in the best interests of the Afghan government—if it wants to continue to receive financial and security assistance—to not do things which make its security guarantors uneasy.
I would argue that support is not falling due to the number of casualties, it is falling due to the fact that Taliban-like laws are being passed even though we have gone out of our way to drive the Taliban from the country.
What is needed now is not merely public fortitude to weather additional casualties, but an explanation from the political masters of both countries as to why it is necessary for us to tolerate Afghan women being reduced to, once again, second-class citizens in their own realm. Surely there ought to be a roadmap to a better future for them, too.
You did a little sleight-of-hand here Mark, and missed a category. You called out the "centre" and "left", but then conspicuously jumped to "big-C Conservatives". What about the small c's?
I think there is a compelling political interpretation of why Afghanistan's still in such bad shape. Much of the political support for Afghanistan since 2001 has come from the Right, and of course there was a right-wing American administration in charge until last year. You would probably agree with me as well that most military folk are of the small-c variety.
But what Afghanistan really needed from the beginning was a robust nation-building operation, something which is more often identified with the Left, and which the Right is generally uncomfortable with. Small-c conservatives who support Afghanistan wage a constant struggle over how much of this "nation-building stuff" they can get behind. Some, like George Will recently in the Washington Post, have had enough of it.
Would you agree with that?
p.s. Chris, I can't stand it when people say things like this: "laws so badly out of step with Western values..."
Brutally misogynistic laws are not an "Eastern value" or an "Afghan value". They come out of a twisted and dangerous authoritarian ideology, forms of which have been historically found all over the West. Afghans are human beings. This is about universal values.
I agree they are (ideally) universal values.
But ah, seeing as humanitarian law has its roots in the First (1864) Geneva Convention (drafted by European powers) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (drafted by Canadian John Humphrey, in conjunction with Eleanor Roosevelt [USA, chair], René Cassin [France], Charles Malik [Lebanon], Peng Chun Chang [China], Hernan Santa Cruz [Chile], Alexandre Bogomolov/Alexei Pavlov [Soviet Union], Lord Dukeston/Geoffrey Wilson [United Kingdom], William Hodgson [Australia]), you will forgive my misstatement that its genesis was in any way due to Western diplomats and humanitarians.
bp: I think you're right about American small "c" conservatives. As far as I can see most Canadian conservatives have simply lost interest in the subject. John Manley :) apart.
Mark
Ottawa
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