Apolitical Staples

It is being “reported” on CTV by Duffy and Fife. If the Conservatives actually wanted to do it, all they have to do is send a formal letter to NATO and publicly announce it.

Why would they have to negotiate anything? Better question - why on earth would the opposition parties even enter into such a nonsensical negotiating session?

Stupid CTV report. Again.

I will believe it when i see it..why negotiate a deal, when you can go to the electorate and possibly gain a majority, obviating the need to strike a deal from a position of weakness..

Kinda curious…

Since when did CTV have any credibility?

I believe Mr. Harper makes those decisions…and I would bet my bottom dollar the CTV isn’t being consulted.

The CPC has no reason whatsoever to run such a trial balloon out there!

When 2009 comes and if Harper is still around, he will say that troop withdrawls are occuring because the mission has been accomplished.

Kursk, I think your reasoning is why the Conservatives might be tempted to do a deal. If there is a fall campaign, the opposition will all say the only reason the government wants a majority is to ram through an open ended mission in Afghanistan. Whether it is true or not, the Tories want to avoid that charge, especially in Quebec.

Blame the voters.

I really don’t like how when one is in the minority position on an issue one always frames doing what the majority of people want as “political expediency”. I mean, sure, it’s “political expedience” if you want to make it sound bad, but you could just as easily call it “following the will of the people”.

Now, I trend to agree that if the Tories end the mission in 2009 as scheduled that one could call that “political expediency” in the sense that they’re not following the will of the people because they want to, but because they feel they NEED to, but it’s still the will of the people.

I usually would never reference an online poll, as I agree they’re not generally that meaningful, but the most recent G&M poll on this has “end the mission in 2009” at 85% support, and “stay until the Taliban is defeated” at 6% support (9% said we should wait until closer to the date to decide, which is where I would be). I don’t think the numbers are actually that extreme, but I KNOW that a CLEAR majority of the Canadian population want the mission to end in 2009, and I’m simply not so shocked that a democratically elected government might actually follow the will of the citizenry.

What bugged me about Coyne’s column was that he layed out every single reason that Duceppe would have to want the mission to end in 2009 EXCEPT that it’s the will of the people! What’s that all about?

I’m also sick of the whole “letting down our NATO allies” argument. If one wants to argue that we’d be letting down the Americans and the British, OK, that’s perhaps a legitimate argument. However, I think it’s ludicrous to argue that by refusing to continue to fight we would somehow be letting down an alliance that for the most part refuses to fight. NATO is letting Canada down, not the other way around, and it seems to me the question is how much longer we’re willing to fight, in order to supposedly stay in the good graces of those who refuse to fight themselves.

I’ve always supported the mission, and haven’t given up myself yet, but I acknowledge I’m in a small minority, and I realize that Canada has already pulled MORE than our weight in Afghanistan, and NO ONE has the right to pretend we’d be letting our allies down by refusing to continue to fight their battles for them.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, but I’m just not sure there’s much chance of the mission being extended beyond 2009. A government can only keep troops fighting overseas against the will of the majority of the population for so long, so opinion of the mission will have to change dramatically for Canada to continue to play such a big role in the future.

The allies we would be letting down include all those NATO allies who are pulling their weight in proportion to their national power. I believe that includes some of the eastern countries, eg Estonia, Poland, Latvia, as well as the Americans, British, and Dutch. Obviously, as LKO says, we would not be letting down the French, Germans, and Italians.

nuke the place from orbit. it’s the only way to be sure

Well MarkCh, it depends upon what one means by “pulling their weight”. Italy has as many people in Afghanistan as Canada I believe, and Germany has more, but being stationed in one area of Afghanistan is not the same as being in another, nor are the missions necessarily the same.

As far as who’s in the tough locales in Afghanistan, doing the fighting, I’d say only the British, Americans and Dutch are pulling like we are, and the other 22 member nations can put up, or shut up as far as I’m concerned.

I just don’t want to hear about Canada letting NATO down after what we’ve already gone through in Afghanistan. It feels to me rather like the Americans complaining that the British aren’t fighting the Nazis hard enough… in 1940.

The Pashtun goat herders, opium farmers and religious crazies in Afghanistan are not Nazis. They’re a lot less dangerous to world peace than say, the Kaiser, or Slobodan Milosovich - neither of whom were anywhere near the threat that the warmongers would have you believe.

I would celebrate the withdrawal of Canadians from yet another remote quagmire, but unfortunately the only purpose of the move would be to concentrate on expanding government and enriching government cronies through welfare programs at home, instead of with arms purchases and foreign aid boondoggles. And in any case by 2009 they probably will have worn out or ruined every single piece of hardware in the CF inventory, so even if they’re out of central Asia, the Conservatives will still get to spend billions of dollars on arms.

The Kaiser actually declared and launched war on his neighbours, both of whom had global empires. If that wasn’t a threat to world peace, what is? And I don’t recall that WWI had to be “mongered”. Everybody tried to avoid it until it actually broke out, and then they had no choice but to win it.

Those harmless wogs only gave safe haven to the 9/11 terrorists. I don’t want them left free to do that again.

But you’re right about Milosevic. He was no concern of ours.