Apolitical Staples

I wish we could have a grown up discussion about Afghanistan and not a marketing campaign.

Is that directed at Harper or Layton? ;)

Greg that’s a scary comment. Why is the elected President of Afghanistan speaking to our Parliament a marketing campaign?

The guy will be lucky not to get killed some day by the Taliban whackos that kill schoolteachers for teaching little girls. Part of our mission is to try and nation build that backwater and fastforward it a few centuries. We’ll be there a decade, shouldn’t we be listening to its President?

None of this is likely to work, unfortunately, since the Taliban are unaffected by all of the speechmaking.

Therein lies the problem: as George Bush has found out after endless photo-ops and speeches and surprise visits, a communications strategy that does not dovetail with a policy aimed at solving the underlying problem is doomed to failure.

I do not fault the PMO for trying it. I just hope that they are just as busy on the policy/planning front.

surely all this will sway public opinion in quebec….heh heh

“Why is the elected President of Afghanistan speaking to our Parliament a marketing campaign?”

Never mind that - politicians are really nothing but salesmen. Remember that Kids in the Hall sketch about the guy who got sold nine toilet plungers by a super-duper salesman down at the hardware store? Get ready - Harper and Karzai have a great, big plunger for you.

What I want to know is, why is the guy who is supposedly our biggest Mideast ally in the war against the Taliban, the military dictator of a government which is in fact the creator and the largest supporter of the Taliban? And in whose country non-Muslims are commonly slaughtered in their places of worship, and where many Muslims attend schools of fundamentalist religious indoctrination, before they go off to kill our soldiers? And why did the west spend 10 years helping the fathers of the Taliban to kill the Afghan allies of the Russians, then turn around and commit to (at least) 10 years of helping the children of the Russian allies to kill the Taliban? Not too muddled. I wish that Mr. Harper and Mr. Karzai would cover these topics in their speeches, but I fear that they’re only going to give us a lot of marketing platitudes about democracy, blah blah, rule of law, blah blah, self determination, blah blah, education, health care, blah, blah, blah. The usual B.S.

“a communications strategy that does not dovetail with a policy aimed at solving the underlying problem is doomed to failure.”

Evidently that was the root of the problems experienced in Afghanistan by the Persians, the Arabs, the British, the Russians … an insufficiently well-crafted communications strategy led to the loss of political will on the homefront.

P.S. If you think that NATO is any smarter than all those other armies of the past, or that the tribes are any more docile or otherwise more ready to put up with a government dominated by foreigners, then you should lay off those Afghan poppyseeds.

So Anon and jeff, will your fearless leader tell Karzai to his face that helping the Afghan people is the ‘wrong mission’ and we want our troops home?

We’re not there to help the Afghan people. We’re there to help the Canadian people.

I’m hoping Karzai has something to say about reinstating the Virtue and Vice police, threatened executions of apostates and the expulsion of Christian missionaries.

Let me say OC, I continue to be impressed by your comments. “We’re not there to help the Afghan people. We’re there to help the Canadian people”. I don’t agree with that 100%, or more correctly I wish it weren’t the case since I want the world do more to help other people but that comment is insightful. Thanks.

Is that directed at Harper or Layton? ;)

It’s directed at the whole political class. :(

“So Anon and jeff, will your fearless leader tell Karzai to his face that helping the Afghan people is the ‘wrong mission’ and we want our troops home?”

He should. He should say, “It’s time to face facts. We’re not doing anyone any good in Afghanistan or in Canada in the long run. If Afghans are decent and intelligent human beings - and I know that they are - then they will solve their own problems better than all of the foreign armies in the world could.” But Harper won’t do that. Too much political capital invested, too spineless to admit an error and get on with doing his job. I would imagine he’s hoping and praying that Hillary or McCain will cut and run sooner rather than later. But I don’t expect it to happen until around the 10th anniversary. Just like the you-know-who.

And speaking of the Soviets, they were also convinced that they were helping themselves by helping the Afghans to fight Islamic extremism. They were also completely mystified why all their welfare programs, infrastructure projects, bribes, friendly policeman act, etc. were rebuffed by the Afghan people. Same old, same old.

If you really think that Canadians can be “helped” by killing Islamic extremists, then why would you waste your time killing extremists in a remote outpost of the Islamic empire? Why don’t you attack and occupy Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? Let me answer the question for you: because you know it is impossible to do so, and even if you did you would solve nothing whatsoever in the long run.

But it works beautifully as a sop to noisy, hard-core Conservative Party supporters and neo-con empire-builders in Canada, and as a distraction from government corruption/mismanagement and economic problems, if the government can pretend that it is “helping Canadians” while only wasting a few billion Canadian dollars and a few dozen Canadian lives. All the distraction and platitudes needed for political cover, at a fraction of the price of an all-out war.

I suspect what Greg is getting at is that we had an opportunity in March to really debate this, but instead of a real debate back then, Harper choose, jingoism and a snap vote. To this day he has not fully explained the plan for carrying out the mission, aside from ‘stay the course” and “support the troops”. Hell in March O’Connor wouldn’t even answer his own question from November when it was asked back to him.

But now you say all will be revealed in a TV address by the PM on September 11, instead of in the House of Commons, in Committee and in a debate, where it should be told. Didn’t you CPC guys get all pissy last May when Martin did the same thing - going before the cameras instead of the House?

How is that moral reletivism working out for you?

You can complain about all sides on this one (actually you can probably say this about most issues). It is like complaining that politicians play politics. How is it grown up to say that NATO should immediately leave Afghanistan, use int’l pressure to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table and once a peace deal has been reached send the troops back. That is what Alexa McDonough said on CPAC today. That is not grown up, that is a childs solution.

And the current government position is to leave our guys in the meat grinder without a plan or way to measure sucess. That’s not a plan either.

Sounds like no one has a solution to this.

What Greg and Mike said.

The exit plan is to reduce the strength of the Taliban to the point where the Afghan military and police can handle the situation with little or now help from NATO. However it is likely that there will be a NATO force in Afghanistan for decades, just as there are still forces in Germany and Korea for example.

.. Afghan military and police can handle the situation ..

Why would they ever fight the Taleban? The Taleban is a religious militia comprised of the majority Pashtun tribe.

Since no Afghan government in its right mind would ever send non-Pashtun government forces to the south, why would Afghan military and police ever challenge the Taleban?