Taliban Thinks Canadians are Weak
This scares me a bunch. The Taliban look to be gearing up to force Canadians to cut and run from Afghanistan. They see a legitimate exercise in democracy (the forthcoming debate tomorrow night) as a sign of weakness. I'd like to pass this on to the Taliban: you're wrong. Canadians don't cut and run. We stay on with the mission until the mission is complete.
That doesn't prevent me from having some apprehensions. The support for Afghanistan is generally soft, and the more often we see Canadian-flag-draped coffins being unloaded from planes the more the left will mobilize against our ongoing participation to rebuild that country. The Taliban knows that this tactic has worked in Iraq, as states that initially supported the coalition there have withdrawn their support as time wore on and casualties occurred. This escalation of the front in Kandahar isn't something that should catch people unaware, as I'd been hearing rumblings all through last year that because of the lack of American forces in the country to bring about the Taliban's final defeat they'd been able to regroup and orchestrate a spring offensive. That's happening now. The problem the election caused in all of this was that the major parties were too focused on getting into office and thus couldn't really discuss the details of the Afghan mission at any great length. Harper has done well to rally support, but more needs to be done so that Canadians have a fuller understanding of exactly what is happening now. Hopefully tomorrow will help with that and thus take the wheels out of any future overtures to prematurely end our presence.
2 comments:
Rich,
Hopefully we will remain strong in our resolve but the history of canadian involvement internationally since Korea isn't that strong. We generally don't keep resolve and grow impatient quickly. Take our role in Bosia or Kosovo. How finished is the job there? Yet we dwindled down to forces in the dozens soon after we claimed victory yay those many years ago. Or how well did our peace keepers do in the congo?
I'd argue that this will be the first legitimate test of Canada's resolve and that we should approach this situation with vigour and tenacity. We need to stand up and be counted. Not cut and run, or pander to the left, or whine about mandate... we need to get on with the job.
The debate monday night was lousy, half the caucus's didn't even show up
Hard to disagree with you there, especially on the "debate." After the haggling to get something along those lines, it was more than a little embarrassing to see the House so very empty after a rather short time.
I'm hoping that Canada's "resolve" is a lot more stringent than what we've seen in the past. My own view is that we ought to be, given the realities of the post-9/11 world, but my appraisal of the reality of the situation is that we, like much of the rest of the world, stopped being 100% committed to fighting the war on terror sometime back in 2002. There's a real gap there, and that's highly problematic because al Qaeda certainly hasn't stopped fighting, the Taliban hasn't stopped fighting, and neither have the insurgent groups in Iraq. This isn't going to be a quick and easy little battle and then *poof* terrorism is gone, it's going to be long and drawn out, much like the Cold War. I'd like to think that Canadians have the stomach for a protracted conflict, but I'm not entirely sure that public opinion is hard enough to weather too many casualties. We've got the same problem as the Americans: the soft underbelly of our foreign policy is the public. Create images that hurt the public, and the enemy will quickly find that the will to fight dissipates.
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