Stephen Harper and Bob Rae have bonded over their shared determination that Canada keep a significant presence in Afghanistan.
This historic drama began this summer, when Bob Rae returned from a few days in Afghanistan to proclaim that Canada must “see this thing through.” Stephen Harper agrees. With what, though? What does it mean?
At a annual cost of half a billion dollars, 950 Canadians will be sent to train the Afghan army and police for three years. Some may be wounded or killed. That’s a necessary sacrifice soldiers make – if there’s a genuine purpose to it. What’s the purpose here?
There are so many questions: What does it mean to “see this thing through”? What’s “the thing”? Killing bin Laden? Saving Afghanistan? Bestowing democracy? Liberating women? “Development”?
Through to what? Victory? What would that mean? Fair and democratic elections? The end of al-Qaeda? The end of the Taliban? The end of corruption? The end of drug dealers? The end of war lords? The end of brutality against women? All of the above?
Given the best existing evidence, the most accurate reply is: none of the above. Most of them are never mentioned any more. The latest American “aspirational” aim is to hand over security to Afghanis by 2014. Mr. Harper's goal is even more ambitious – to ensure that Afghan forces can take over “within the next couple of years.” This is truly mysterious. Where did these dates suddenly come from? Are either remotely realistic?
We are assured that Canadian soldier-trainers will remain “inside the wire” and be relatively safe. The operative word is “relatively.” No one is safe in Afghanistan, anywhere. U.S. forces have been tripled under President Barack Obama since last year and 120,000 foreign troops are now involved. Yet violence is at its highest level since the Taliban were overthrown and Taliban control over vast areas of the country has increased. Yet General David Petraeus, the Americans’ most renowned military strategist, believes there must be a reasonable level of security and safety before local forces take over. Will this magically happen in the next two to three years?
Training an effective Afghanistan police force or army to make the country self-sufficient in security has been on the agenda since the United States first invaded in 2001. It has remained the impossible dream ever since. Washington is now spending $1-billion every month on training, more than the entire Karzai government’s budget. What reason is there to think the job can now be done in the next three years? What value-added will more Canadian trainers and half a billion dollars a year introduce that does not now exist?
In the implausible event a trained and disciplined security force will emerge, whom will they report to? Gen. Petraeus calls the Afghan government a “crime syndicate.” What will it do with a proper army?
It’s strange. Afghans are among the world’s best warriors when they choose to be, as their entire history to this moment demonstrates. Just about every male except babies and toddlers has a gun and can use it. How come NATO and Hamid Karzai can’t put together a functioning security force? Maybe they can borrow the trainers the Taliban use.
Surely the onus is on the Harper-Rae coalition to explain to the nation why it’s worth sacrificing a single Canadian soldier for a cause that seems all but lost. Having just read Bob Woodward’s remarkable series of books on the Bush administration's conduct of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Mr. Obama’s conduct of the war in Afghanistan, I believe it is not possible to make that case.
With his unprecedented, almost eerie access to everyone who’s anyone in Washington, here’s the behind-the-scene picture Mr. Woodward paints of both the Bush and Obama administrations: ignorance, disagreement, dishonesty, incompetence, hypocrisy, confusion, politics, backbiting, internal jealousies, more ignorance, more lying and a complete lack of consensus on what the United States is up to and how to get there. Unexpectedly, the mind-boggling dysfunction under Mr. Bush has remained so under Mr. Obama.
