Results Over Process

I sat through five of the six hours of the debate last night. I am glad to see the result, that a plurality of our parliamentarians supported a two-year extension of Canada's mission in Afghanistan. This will give our troops and civilian leadership considerable time to plan a long-term, coherent strategy to help bring about the conditions for victory for Canada, the ISAF, and Afghanistan itself. It will facilitate the transfer of command of NATO operations for the year 2008 to Canada, allowing our role in this mission to be one of leadership that will reflect our shared values of democracy, human rights, and stability. The narrow result, 149-145, reflects the split in this country over the Afghanistan mission, and I am glad to see that the Conservative caucus and a large segment of the Liberal caucus, including its often-criticized leader, had the fortitude and courage of their convictions to support the mission.

Having said that, the actual debate was shameful and embarrassing to watch. It is clear that many of our parliamentarians are simply in over their head when talking about foreign and military affairs, as made evident by the lack of depth and true passion in what should have been a very serious, thoughtful, and evocative debate. On an issue that should have transcended narrow party lines and been a thorough discussion of Canada's role, objectives, and values, we got far too much partisanship and shallow, superficial commentary.
Going in to this debate, we all knew that the time for discussion and dialogue was limited to six hours. Whether or not this is long enough to have a genuinely satisfying and informative debate on an issue of such great importance, the behaviour of too many politicians betrayed that importance. I would imagine that if one were to tally up the amount of time used by opponents of the motion(mission?) to lament the fact there were only six hours, that the Dutch spent 10 months debating whether to extend their participation in ISAF, one would probably find that at least one hour was wasted. If you know that your time is limited, use it effectively to remain focused on the issue at hand. By the time you subtract that wasted use of speech and debate time, a six-hour debate became limited to five hours (at most) of actual important discussion. That is shameful, and Canadians deserve better. More importantly, because they are in harm's way, the Canadian Forces deserve better.
Another complaint that I had was that there was too much hair-splitting over whether Canadian Forces are in Afghanistan under the aegis of NATO/ISAF or the American Operation Enduring Freedom. Given the time constraints, does this really matter enough to justify expending even more time? One way or another, our military troops are involved in the pacification and reconstruction of Afghanistan. That means getting rid of the Taliban/al Qaeda remnants that still dream of re-taking Afghanistan. If we're shooting them in Alexa McDonough's so-called "search and kill" missions, good. It's not being done to help American imperialism, it's being done to help the people of Afghanistan. I realize that there are different command structures and probably rules of engagement, but the Taliban aren't going to stop shooting if we try to tell them that we're there under the NATO banner.
As I earlier said, there was too much "party line" involved in the discussion, and not enough emotion and depth to the debate. A lot of the questions and comments revolved around the same small number of themes, and there was no real discussion of what constitutes Canadian values vis-a-vis this mission. The NDP were the worst for this, as just about every one of their speakers sounded far too similar to Jack Layton (McDonough being an exception, since she's got senior statesman status in the party...but more on her in a minute), and betrayed Canadian history. It is true that we, at one time, had a stellar record when it came to UN-based peacekeeping. However, the "golden age" during the Pearson era has been extensively mythologized at the same time that Canada's participation in UN-based peacekeeping missions has steadily and drastically declined. Peacekeeping is a laudable goal, but without forward-leaning military force, there would be no "peace" to speak of in Afghanistan. It is proper and appropriate that Canadian Forces be employing counterinsurgency methods to bring security to the Kandahar region. So doing allows for the development programs and aid workers to continue their noble work without having to worry about being abducted and/or killed. The NDP may be scared by "boots on the ground," but victory cannot be achieved without it.
The NDP, in holding up the false idol of Canadian peacekeeping, overlook and seek to put the cover over Canada's proud history of military combat. Two World Wars, Korea, and the Persian Gulf War were major combat operations in which Canadian forces fought, killed, and died to protect our freedoms and values in the world. Contrary to what the NDP would like to portray, we do have a military legacy, and we are not just peacekeepers. Peter MacKay had a statement that he felt truly summed up the NDP:
"I do not expect members of the NDP to understand this. I fully expect that the Neville Chamberlains of the 21st century in the NDP do not want to be part of an effort that is aimed at elevating the lives of the people of Afghanistan."
On this one, I'm wary. Having spoken against Munich references in the past, it would be inconsistent of me to endorse this one. I understand that the NDP has a more pacifist ring to it, but I dunno. It's a straw man, and not one that is particularly generous.
Trading blue berets/helmets for Canadian soldier helmets does far more for global security and justice. The professionalism of the CF has been tremendous throughout the past four and a half years; they have carried out every mission required of them, and have ably and demonstrably fulfilled the conditions of the "three block war" that Canada's 2005 International Policy Statement defines as essential to modern deployments.
The partisanship of the night was at a low level for the most part, until just before 10pm ADT, when Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla took the floor and said the following:
"Mr. Speaker, when we look at Canada's reputation, for many years we, as a country and as a nation, have been the champions of human rights, of peace, of stability, of diplomacy and of democracy throughout the world. The Liberal Party and the previous Liberal governments have always been a champion in ensuring that those rights are upheld, along with our international reputation.
It is quite interesting that in the last 100 days, since the new Conservative government has been in power, Conservative members are all of a sudden concerned about our international reputation and Canada's foreign policy. If this was a priority for the government, why was it not listed as one of the top five priorities that Mr. Harper wanted to address? In addition to this--"
This, simply put, disgusted me. The Speaker cut her off and the response from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Deepak Obhrai, was rightly justified in its tone and anger. Foreign and military policy is much too important to engage in blatant partisanship at its worst. It would be far too easy to shred every claim she made in her statement, but I'll leave that to any commenters. Canada's international reputation and foreign policy are not the sole purview of a single political party, and demagoguing on Harper's top five priorities is completely inappropriate to a debate on Canada's ongoing military participation in Afghanistan. She should be ashamed of herself and I truly hope that Bill Graham, as leader of the Liberal Party, gave her a stern lecture on how to conduct oneself in a debate of national and personal importance. Peoples' lives are on the line, and to launch into a spiel on election campaign platitudes is unacceptable behaviour.
Dhalla's absurd outburst brings me to my next point: given this was only a six-hour debate, where were the 'A-teams' for the majority of the time? This debate was largely conducted by the 'B-' and even 'C-teams' of all the parties, many of whom were simply over their head and not aptly suited to debate Canadian military and foreign policy on the level that it deserves. Where was Michael Ignatieff? I saw him sitting in his back-row seat for about twenty minutes during the fifth hour to listen to a colleague, but a cursory examination of Hansard reveals that he only made one statement, one that is profound and should have merited a lengthy discussion and evaluation:
"I support the mission precisely because it is the moment where we have to test the shift from one paradigm, the peacekeeping paradigm, to a peace enforcement paradigm that combines military, reconstruction and humanitarian effort together. I have been to Afghanistan and I believe this new paradigm can work."
That is the type of debate I truly wanted to see, a forceful and engaging discussion on what Canada should be doing, not only in Afghanistan, but everywhere that it commits its soldiers. Where was Paul Martin? The former prime minister did not even make an appearance during the debate and was not present for the vote. Given that it was under his leadership that the mission was extended (without a vote in Parliament), he obviously had good reasons for wanting to maintain Canada's presence in Afghanistan, and his insights and contributions would have been much more compelling and interesting than listening to partisan blather from C-teamers like Ruby Dhalla. For such an important debate, to see the House at least half-empty for at least half the debate was discouraging. I don't expect it to be a full audience for the full six hours (though I would have been there for all of it), but that was almost painful to watch. Our troops and our foreign policy deserve better than a half-assed effort from our country's so-called leaders, and they deserve better than being left in the hands of local politicians who are clearly over their heads.