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"The dead soldiers being honoured yesterday [at the anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge] had lain in the ground for 90 years," The Globe's Alan Freeman and Doug Saunders write on today's front page in their article Queen, French leader echo PM's Afghan link to Vimy

"But on every leader's lips, on every observer's mind, was another group of Canadian soldiers, killed in an equally contentious battle on the other side of the world less than 24 hours before."

"It was probably inevitable that yesterday's Vimy commemoration would end up being used as a metaphor for the NATO war in Afghanistan — especially after six Canadian soldiers were killed in a roadside-bomb explosion there Sunday."

"But for the 25,000 Canadians here, the connections between the two wars followed very different lines. For some, Vimy is a shining example to the Canada of the 21st century. For others, it is a grim warning."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's earlier linking of the First World War battle to Canada's mission in Afghanistan provoked some controvery back in Canada, with critics arguing he should not have used the memorial ceremony to push a modern-day political issue.

What do you think?

Was Mr. Harper right to link the two events? Or was he playing politics? Or both?

Mr. Saunders and Mr. Freeman were online earlier today to take your questions about their article, the Vimy ceremony and the political furor.

Your questions and their answers appear at the bottom of this page.

In 2001, Doug Saunders became the first person to win three National Newspaper Awards in a row, and last year he won one a fourth time for his column, Reckoning.

After serving as an editorial writer and a writer on media, he moved to the paper's Los Angeles bureau, where he won three awards for critical writing.

He is now in The Globe's London-based European bureau, where he writes about international issues and writes his column.

Mr. Freeman has been writing for newspapers and wire services for more than 30 years.

A graduate of McGill and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Mr. Freeman joined The Canadian Press in 1974. He spent nine years with The Wall Street Journal before joining The Globe in 1989 as an economics correspondent based in Ottawa.

From 1996, Mr. Freeman has been one of the paper's foreign correspondents, first based in Berlin, then London and Washington.

Editor's Note: We will follow the same rules for this question-and-answer session as we do for our usual live discussions. globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. HTML is not allowed. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.

Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Welcome, Doug. Welcome, Alan. Thanks for taking the time today to take questions from the readers of globeandmail.com.

Let me start by asking you whether you were surprised by the overt linking by Prime Minister Harper, the Queen and other leaders of the Vimy ceremonies to the fighting in Afghanistan? Was this scripted in advance and would it have happened anyway? Or purely a reaction to the six deaths Sunday? Or a bit of both?

Doug Saunders: Hi, Jim, and thanks for inviting us to join this discussion.

Given that Canada is at war at the moment, albeit in a very different sort of war, a war that was the product of United Nations legislation and NATO leadership, it would have been hard to avoid any connection.

But Mr. Harper is indeed attempting a different sort of connection, one that I very much doubt was made to the Balkans in the 1990s, for example.

Rather than simply linking the suffering and loss, he drew ties to a certain idea of military obligation and sacrifice. General Rick Hillier, commander of Canada's armed forces, also used these words quite explicitly in his interview with me. The word "sacrifice" was used — a concept that is important within military communities but has become almost obsolete in the wider community.

One British magazine article described this as "the new, muscular Canada" — a concept that Mr. Harper's people are quite eager to promote. That is, they want Canada to be seen as leading international agendas, including military interventions, rather than just participating or standing by.

Gen. Hillier, commander of the Canadian Armed Forces, asked NATO to put the Canadian forces in the most dangerous and risky part of Afghanistan, Kandahar Province. He did this to overcome Canada's image as a passive, peacekeeping-oriented military power.

In both cases, the models of patriotism and international engagement that were fashionable a century ago are worth reviving in order to build public support for this transformation.

I doubt that much thought was required for Mr. Harper and his colleagues to draw a link between the ethos of Vimy and their image of a new Canada: They've been talking the language of Vimy Ridge for a year now, and on Monday they just happened to be doing it on location.

Alan Freeman: No, I was not surprised by the overt linkage between Vimy and Afghanistan. It's clearly part of Mr. Harper's effort to build a broad constituency for the Afghan campaign.

What is strange about this policy is that it simply exacerbates Mr. Harper's Quebec problem when it comes to Afghanistan. The First World War was extremely unpopular in Quebec. There was overt opposition to conscription and relatively few French Canadians fought in the war.

Today, that war and Vimy Ridge have virtually no resonance in Quebec. There were just a handful of students from Quebec and virtually no coverage in the Quebec media. So by linking Vimy and Afghanistan, Mr. Harper may be helping his cause in English Canada but hurting it in Quebec, where support for the Afghan campaign is very soft to begin with.

Mr. Harper always planned to make the link between the two conflicts but was forced to update his speech on Sunday after the six deaths.

As for the Queen, she added a touching tribute to the dead men in her speech. I'm certain that it was done with the full knowledge of the Prime Minister's Office. In this context, Mr. Harper is the Queen's Prime Minister. There may have been a discreet suggestion to make the addition from Ottawa or the palace itself may have decided it was appropriate. But I can assure you it was not a surprise to Mr. Harper.

Likewise with French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's more extensive comments. This is what allies do for each other in these circumstances. If the French Prime Minister were in Canada and French soldiers were killed in a NATO mission, I would expect Mr. Harper would pay homage to them as well.

Jason Schmidt, Saskatoon: I'd like to know what the ordinary soldiers and civilians who attended the Vimy ceremonies thought about Harper's linking of WWI and Afghanistan. Did they agree with his reasoning? Or did they think it was a political act?

Doug Saunders: We spent a lot of our time at Vimy Ridge interviewing the 25,000-odd Canadians in the crowd on this very question.

People generally didn't need much prodding: To learn about six deaths in Afghanistan when you're standing on the surprisingly unchanged trenches of a WWI battlefield where Canadians died in huge numbers is to make such comparison inevitable.

I spoke at length to a couple dozen high-school students about the two wars and got passing comments from many more, and Alan interviewed a good number himself. We both talked to veterans, uniformed military personnel and ordinary hangers-on.

If Mr. Harper's intent was to suggest that the human sacrifice and loss of life Canada made in WWI is analogous to the UN-ordered NATO campaign in Afghanistan, or that the campaigns deserve similar degrees of public support — and I believe that was the message of his Sunday speech — then it clearly wasn't getting through, even to this crowd.

I couldn't find a single high-school student who fully supported Canada's role in Afghanistan.

Most of them told me they'd become much more pro-military as a result of studying WWI. They knew that the bodies beneath their feet were those of kids of roughly their age, and most of them said they would volunteer to fight in a similar war.

But none of those who said they'd volunteer were willing to consider fighting in Afghanistan. They did not see the battle as being at all similar. I'm sure there were students who felt differently, but I was unable to find them in a day of looking.

Military personnel, including soldiers, officers and cadets, were more mixed in opinion. Some said they saw Afghanistan as a similar fight on behalf of a respected alliance for a noble cause. But a lot of them, perhaps half, were vocally critical of Afghanistan and some were angered that their Prime Minister was drawing parallels.

Others have argued that Mr. Harper and his Liberal antecedents have done a poor job of explaining the values and goals of the Afghan war to the Canadian public.

I would now tend to agree, given that a very war-conscious crowd, who'd just heard the PM's best attempt at a pitch, were clearly not persuaded.

Alan Freeman: I have a different take on this from Doug.

I can't say that I had the time to speak to nearly as many people as I wished. But aside from the students, the crowd was filled with veterans, active members of the armed forces, families of vets and military history followers who are just the people Mr. Harper is trying to appeal to. Most of them are more enthusiastic about Canada's involvement in Afghanistan than the majority of Canadians.

What Mr. Harper is attempting to do is create a grand military tradition sweeping from Vimy Ridge to today. I think that's a stretch.

Unlike the U.S. or Britain, where the support for the military is broad and deep because of both countries' large defence spending and activist foreign policy over the decades, Canada has not been involved in real war fighting since Korea. Also, backers of an activist military are much fewer in number than in those other countries.

So in many ways, Mr. Harper was preaching to the converted at Vimy Ridge.

Jasmine Francis, Halifax: What possible connection is there between a huge trench-warfare frontal assault that took place 90 years ago in a war between nations and an occupation of an Asian country, many of whose inhabitants, angry at corruption and warlords, are resisting that occupation?

Alan Freeman: Good question, Jasmine.

First off, I would disagree on your definition of the Afghan conflict. The Iraq war was and still is an invasion followed by an occupation. Afghanistan is slightly different. The Americans never invaded Afghanistan in 2001. They bombed the Taliban and provided support to the Northern Alliance, which captured Kabul and installed a new government.

Since then, NATO has been slowly moving into the provinces and attempting to bolster the Kabul government and eliminate the Taliban. Unlike in Iraq, the population is not universally opposed to the NATO presence.

That being said, the two conflicts are vastly different. But you can't choose your wars.

I don't anybody who will deny that Afghanistan under the Taliban had turned into a base for al-Qaeda, creating considerable risk for the U.S. and the West — witness the Sept. 11 attacks.

So it's not unreasonable for NATO, of which Canada is a member, to want to stabilize the country and avoid a reconquest of the country by the Taliban. The Afghan war may be a messy business but I'm not sure what the alternative is.

Doug Saunders: There are more similarities between these conflicts than you might realize — though many are on the domestic, Canadian side.

Both wars are "optional" wars for Canada. In other words, they are situations where the threat is not directly or even indirectly to Canada or its sources of livelihood.

Unlike the Second World War, where Hitler had territorial ambitions on Britain, North America and potentially the entire world, the First World War was a much more continental European matter. Britain was involved indirectly, because it was in an alliance with France (and had concerns about maintaining certain existing systems of empires), and Canada even more indirectly, because it was part of the British Empire (and because its people were ethnically and often nationally British: Perhaps half the "Canadian" soldiers who fought at Vimy were born in Britain).

This oblique relationship to the conflict at hand bears a striking resemblance to the Afghan conflict today: While the values involved may be familiar to Canadians, there is no direct connection, or threat, to our country.

We are there in Kandahar province alongside Britain, which is the largest NATO force in the region. You could argue that Britain is there because the United States decided to fight there (although I don't think this argument can be supported: It was agreed among the UN member nations, simultaneously with the U.S., that military action needed to be taken against the Taliban).

The First World War divided Canada, provoked protest marches and riots, and left many people angry and scarred (especially in Quebec). Afghanistan is proving to be equally divisive. It is worth any politician's time to study the similarities.

Tom Langford, Montreal: The only link that can be made between Vimy Ridge and the war in Afghanistan is the fact our troops are once again showing their bravery. For me, that fact was never in question.

France was invaded by another country. And Afghanistan?

When France became liberated, the French were willing to take over the defence of their own country, so we could move on to liberate other countries. This is not the case in Afghanistan.

In France, we knew who the enemy was and we had no problem picking them out from the population. NOT the case in Afghanistan. We could be standing right next to the enemy (so close one of them could hit us with an axe! which did happen, BTW)!

We have already been in Afghanistan about as long as the whole WWI lasted and there's still no end in sight.

The German Army invaded several countries and it looked like they were not intending to stop. North America was no doubt in their sights. Afghanistan's Taliban are not that mobile — even in their own country.

I find it pathetic that a politician would try to make a link between Vimy Ridge and the war in Afghanistan just to justify our presence in "southern" Afghanistan!

Alan Freeman: Tom, I agree that it was easier to know who the enemy was in the First World War. But because it's more complicated in Afghanistan, should Canadians stay home?

There are lots of other ways in which the two conflicts are different. Scale is one thing. Close to 3,600 Canadians were killed in just four days at Vimy Ridge, while we're now talking about 51 deaths in five years in Afghanistan.

But as we all know, warfare is no longer as cut and dry as it was in the two world wars.

Does that mean that Canada should stop participating in conflicts, even when they are decided collectively with our allies through NATO or the UN?

Geoffrey Diss, Berlin: I whole-heartedly support our troops. My brother's one of them, and he's been to Afghanistan twice so far. If he weren't one of them, I'd still whole-heartedly support our troops.

I don't however support this mission as it has evolved, particularly under the current government. Helping a UN effort to stabilize and hopefully democratize Afghanistan was one thing, but actively participating (i.e., effectively going to war) in whatever the U.S. is really up to in the region was a very wrong turn for us.

Alan Freeman: Geoffrey, I'm not certain I understand your point on this.

Canada is obviously not part of every military action the U.S. is up to. We kept away from Vietnam. We kept out of Iraq. It's true the U.S. is the lead actor in Afghanistan but Canadians are fighting alongside the British and the Dutch and there are forces from many NATO allies in Afghanistan.

I see Canada's Afghan involvement as the exception rather than the rule — which is why there seems to be so much opposition to it in Canada.

John Doe, Spruce Grove, Alta.: This heartless Prime Minister is over in Europe only for photo ops for the upcoming election he is pushing for.

He cares for nothing else but power. Just check out his attack ads, and you will see the size of his soft heart. [Can you comment on how well-scripted his visit to Vimy was?]

Jason Roy, Nova Scotia: Harper is there because he is the PM. If Layton, Dion, Duceppe, Martin, or Chrétien were PM, they would be there [doing the same thing. Can you comment?]

Alan Freeman: Let's not be naive. The priority of any politician is to gain and maintain power. So Mr. Harper is no different than his predecessors.

And these events are always scripted. What is different about Mr. Harper is that he wants to control absolutely everything.

Having spent the last three years in Washington, it reminds me of the way George W. Bush runs the White House, particularly as regards the press. Mr. Harper was away from the country for two days and never once took questions from the journalists travelling with him, clearly anxious to avoid any unexpected question that would mess up his Vimy show.

That was particualrly shocking after Canada experienced its single worst day in terms of military casualties since the 1950s.

My experience with Mr. Chrétien is that even though he loved power as much as any prime minister, he did feel an obligation to make himself available to the press, particularly when important events arose.

Having not reported regularly from Ottawa for several years, I still can't figure out what Mr. Harper is afraid of.

Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Thanks, Alan. Thanks, Doug. I'm sure our readers appreciated your insight and analysis today.