A prime minister's decision to go to war

David Akin reminds us:

A Canadian prime minister determines that the activities of terrorists operating in a Muslim nation far from Canada’s shores is such a threat to Canada’s security, that he dispatches Canadian Forces on a combat mission. There is no debate or discussion in Parliament let alone a vote. There seems not to have even been a full cabinet discussion before the prime minister makes his decision. Simply a request from an American president.
That was all it took for Jean Chrétien to to begin what would become Canada’s decade-long war against terrorism in Afghanistan. ...

...

I've heard it said that Jean Chretien is supplying Justin Trudeau with backroom advice.  Could that be true?

Glavin on Afstan

From Terry Glavin's excellent essay on Afghanistan:

...The pall that has fallen over Afghan democrats has nothing to do with American guns or American money. What has changed are the reasons the United States is giving for having soldiers in Afghanistan in the first place, and the fire-sale price the White House is now willing to offer to pack everything in....

It's a long read but well worth it. 

[Via GayandRight]

Afghanistan wasn't always a medieval backwater

Celestial Junk posted a link to a very interesting article looking back at a prosperous Kabul half a century ago.

What happened? Soviet imperialism, Pakistani meddling and, as CJunk put it, Islamism: the Dogshit in the Ice Cream.

Ezra Levant defends our soldiers in the Star

Reps of the far left (Dosanjh) and nitwit (Kinsella) factions of the Liberal party have been playing fast and loose with accusations of torture against our military in its treatment of Afghan detainees. Ezra Levant has an excellent piece in, of all places, the Toronto Star where he offers Iggy some good advice on how and why he ought to get a grip on his party's position on this:

... The Liberals' increasing anti-troops radicalism shows how marginalized the party has become out of power. Four years ago, the Liberals could handle grave responsibilities of state like prosecuting a war. Now they indulge in sloganeering more suited to a permanent opposition party.

Ignatieff eventually apologized for his Israel war crimes comment. Will he ask Dosanjh and Kinsella to apologize for theirs?

[H/t: Joanne at Blue Like You]

All you need to know about the detainee "scandal"

Joanne at Blue Like You provides the links that give the proper perspective on this media and opposition hyped non-issue.

Update (from the comments): Wilson points out Christie Blatchford's outstanding column which complements what Terry Glavin had to say on the audio link Joanne refers to (and this to say on his blog today).

Brooks in Afstan

Damian Brooks' latest report from the wilds of Afghanistan. Fine reporting and photos.

Damian Brooks in Afghanistan

Blogger Damian Brooks of "The Torch" is with the troops in Afghanistan. His first couple of reports are here and here.

Taliban Jack is back!

In response to news of a British commander’s assessment that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won, Jack Layton expresses his happiness:

"I'm heartened by the words of this senior military commander ..."

Good news for the Taliban is good news for Jack. That really ought to boost troop morale.

Detailed analysis at The Torch where the bottom line is:

The one thing Brigadier Carleton-Smith did not say was that the Taliban would win. But that is certainly not the impression most readers would get from those headlines, which seem to say the glass is plain empty--if not entirely broken. Most people think if you don't win, you lose. I really do think the Western media are increasingly taking sides: the wrong one. Fie on them.

Taliban Top Ten

You Might Be Taliban if.....

1. You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to beer.
2. You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can't afford shoes.
3. You have more wives than teeth.
4. You wipe your butt with your bare left hand, but consider bacon "unclean."
5. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.
6. You can't think of anyone you HAVEN'T declared Jihad against.
7. You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives in your clothing.
8. You've felt the "urge" after seeing a woman's exposed ankle.
9. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.
10. You've ever uttered the phrase, "I love what you've done with your cave."

[h/t: Vinney Di]

Charter rights for the Taliban? (Part II)

This excellent ‘Post’ editorial comments on the recent federal court ruling on the Amnesty and BCCLU attempt to have the Canadian Charter apply to Afghan detainees:

The good news is that federal court Justice Anne Mactavish refused to order our soldiers to stop transferring enemy prisoners into the custody of the Afghan government.

The bad news is that she based her judgment not on the merits of the case ... [leaving] the door open for judicial intervention if circumstances require our soldiers to resume prisoner transfers at some future date.

Judge Mactavish -- and whoever else hears such cases going forward -- should realize that Kandahar is not Kitchener; and it is ridiculous to think that the residents of both places should be able to avail themselves of the same Charter rights and due process.

... the legal suit really seems more like a means of advancing the unstated third alternative: pulling out our troops altogether and washing our hands of the imperfect Afghan regime...

If Amnesty and the BCCLA get their way, then whole nations will be abandoned to their suffering for the sake of protecting Canadian moral purity in regard to a handful of suspects. Like so many pious defenders of human rights who have raised their voices since 9/11, these NGOs have lost the forest for the trees. It is a shame that Judge Mactavish found basis in her law books to provide them encouragement.

This is where mindless pacifism and legal idiocy lead.

Craven Liberals proposing a retreat

The Liberal position on Afghanistan, deliberately vague as it is, does not stand up to serious scrutiny.

In his post ‘Those craven Liberals’ Mark Collins attempts to analyze Dion’s ‘logic’ and comes to a most realistic conclusion:

In reality, as we all know, the current Liberal demand is based almost solely on the calculation that it is politically popular and will win votes--especially in Quebec and the Greater Toronto Area. What short-sighted, crass cynicism. Mike Pearson may well indeed be rolling in his grave.

‘Dion Proposing a Retreat’ by Marcus Gee, similarly, tries to follow the Liberal position to it’s logical conclusion under various assumed rules of engagement, arriving at similar conclusions:

Saying you want to deliver aid without engaging in combat sounds fine on Parliament Hill, but you can't deliver aid without security. And to maintain security, you sometimes have to engage in combat with those who are trying to shatter it.

And that ... is what Mr. Dion is proposing: a retreat. Without the ability to engage in combat when needed, Canadian soldiers would be reduced to impotence - gentle shepherds in a countryside overrun with wolves. ... It is like asking cops to prevent muggings without arresting muggers.

Both Collins and Gee have it right. The Liberal proposition is unworkable in any practical sense, so the only remaining ‘rationale’ is cynical political posturing. And the Taliban must be watching this with glee.

Applaud your principles, deplore your logic

In response to a BC NDP candidate’s letter comes this gem:

Re: Would-Be MP Takes Up The Challenge, letter to the editor, Feb. 2.

Letter-writer and federal candidate Teresa Townsley states, "Afghan families need disarmament, development and aid" -- and she's right. But I have a question for Ms. Townsley -- a question informed by military service in Afghanistan, Croatia, Serbia, Iran, Iraq and other odd and sundry places. Just how do you propose to provide "disarmament, development and aid" without fighting? All the folks I ever met -- I was with many units, the last one being 3 Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry in Kandahar in 2002 -- who needed to be "disarmed" weren't exactly voluntarily compliant with my request that they disarm, even when that request was made on behalf of the United Nations. Those folks, as I recall, took some serious convincing to see the error of their ways; some of them even needed killing before they complied.

I applaud your principles, Ms. Townsley --but I deplore your logic.

Roy Harding, Warrant Officer (ret'd), Terrace, B.C.

Well said, Warrant! Just don’t expect a socialist to accept reality.

Canada’s Charter applies to Afghan detainees?

That’s what Amnesty International Canada and the BC Civil Liberties Union are contending in federal court. As David Frum puts it to his American audience:

One reason to follow Canadian politics is that Canada's hyper-activist courts often function as a kind of test kitchen, in which the legal left can experiment with concepts before advancing them in the US.

As one of the lawyers for Amnesty and the BCCLU puts it:

"If detainees are just protected by international law, only the general decides; if the Charter applies, the courts can overrule the generals. The real difference is who can supervise the generals."

That would be one more hand tied behind our military’s back. With friends like Amnesty and the BCCLU who needs the Taliban?

I wish these clowns would take as much interest in seeing that Canada’s Charter actually applies to Canadians - as in "freedom of expression."

[via]

Update (Feb 4/08): A response to Amnesty and BCCLU. [via]

"No wonder Canadians are confused and ill-informed"

At the "The Torch" Mark Collins posts a couple of excellent letters on Afstan he wrote to the Globe and Mail and the National Post.

Mark is unimpressed with Don Martin’s journalistic abilities:

...his vision is rather limited. He's basically all attitude and little cattle...:

No wonder Canadians are confused and ill-informed about the situation in Afghanistan. ...in his column "Canadian troops far from alone" (Jan. 24)...[...] he gets quite a few basic facts wrong--all the more emarkable since he was in Afghanistan himself just half a year ago.

[The litany of Martin’s errors follows]

Couldn't agree more. In December Mr. Martin wrote up his assessments of the year’s best and worst politicians. My thought at the time was that in a similar list of journalists he would easily be among the worst.

“military sugarcoating what is going on..” - Newman on Afstan

This incredible baloney from Don Newman’s interview with John Manley on Politics today:

11:40 Newman: ..you say there has to be better communication, better understanding by Canadians ... the implication being the government is in a way, uh, or maybe the military is sugar-coating what is going on, uh because we hear about the successes all the time in Afghanistan and then we hear almost back-channel both NATO and the US are reviewing their tactics in Afghanistan because the Taliban is doing better than it did. So Canadians are not getting straight goods from the government?

Sure Don, all Canadians get from the media is the good news.
Correction from Manley:

12:50 Manley: Not that I would ever be critical of the media, but Don, ... when we visited a project in the center of Kabul, an amazing redevelopment project largely funded by CIDA ...the whole package ... A group of Canadian reporters came to see it because it was a CIDA project. That afternoon, regrettably a Canadian soldier was killed. The whole [CIDA] story was killed so that we could report ... the incident, then a couple of days later we show the ramp ceremony, then we show the return, then we show the funeral. Canadians have the impression that all we do over there is sit and get shot. Well we’re into a lot more and balancing that story is an important element of ensuring that Canadians actually know what it is they either support or oppose.

Good for John Manley!

For more see Mark Collins' posts at The Torch here and here; and Joanne's Journey.

New York Times attacks the troops

Mark Steyn’s OCRegister column picks up the story of the New York Times’ latest hack job. This time it’s homicidal military vets returning from Iraq and Afstan:

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan either "committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one." The "committed a killing" formulation includes car accidents.
[...]
It didn't seem to occur to the Times to check whether the murder rate among recent veterans is higher than that of the general population of young men. It's not.

Au contraire, the columnist Ralph Peters calculated that Iraq and Afghanistan vets are about one-fifth as likely to murder you as the average 18-to-34-year-old American male.

The reality, then, was the opposite of what the NYT tried to portray. Compared to the general population war vets are model citizens. That’s precisely what most reasonable people would expect, isn’t it?

What's going on? Sloppy journalism, anti-military bias, political agenda or all of the above?

[Related]

And his trip was going so well!

Poor Stéphane. He was getting good press on his visit to Afghanistan. Well, not everyone agreed.

But Mr. Dion has reversed the effect of any good press by musing about the need for NATO to intervene on the Afghan/Pakistan border. It’s hard to see how he’s going to square pulling our troops out of combat with a proposal to involve NATO in a potentially much more intense combat operation.

See also: Mark Collins’ ‘More of M. Dion's ignorance‘ and Joanne’s ‘Regarding Stephane Dion's leadership potential‘.

A gruesome lesson for admirers of Gandhi

Pacifists never tire of invoking Gandhi’s example as a non-violent model for bringing about change. His apparent success has attracted many followers.

But, as commenters on this post by Kathy Shaidle point out, Gandhi’s tactics worked because his opponents were decent, civilized people to begin with, the British. This comment by ‘The Phantom’ provides a pointer to a rather gruesome illustration of what happens when this is not the case.

It goes without saying that the Burmese example of the use of pacifism would yield similar results against the Taliban.

Support for the troops in Hull

This full page ad was placed in a Gatineau-Hull French language newspaper by Hull auto dealer André Dupont.




En anglais:

Be proud of our Canadian military.

Nobody is in favour of War

No one is in favour of war for the sake of war.

But when our country mobilizes to defend people’s freedom, democracy and peace, we have the duty to support our soldiers, to acknowledge their courage and to honour them.

We should be proud of these men and women who put their lives on the line every day in the name of defending our institutions and our freedom.

Our prayers go out to our soldiers deployed in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world, and there is a special place in our heart for those who fall on the battlefield and give their lives carrying out their mission. To their families, their wives and their husbands and their children we offer our most profound sympathies.

Would that their sacrifice serve as an example to all of us, and their example inspire the next generation.

Andre Dupont

(from, via)

A sterling performance with one small blemish

Harper’s address to Australia’s parliament

Stephen Harper’s historic address to the Aussie national assembly on September 11th was very well received at home and abroad. Bruce Cheadle summarizes highlights of the address and a subsequent news conference:

He excoriated Canada's appointed Senate, tipped his hat to the "Quebecois nation," praised the middle class and tax cuts and even managed to shoe-horn in a reference to hockey.

But his main message was a ringing call for Canada and Australia to keep doing the kind of tough military work that has marked the two countries' long shared history.

However, in an otherwise sterling performance, one unfortunate statement - a thoroughly debunked bit of ‘root causes’ junk - found its way into the PM’s address:

"Because as 9-11 showed," Harper told the national assembly, "if we abandon our fellow human beings to lives of poverty, brutality and ignorance, in today's global village their misery will eventually and inevitably become ours."

This caught the attention of Jules Crittendon of the Boston Herald. And he wasn’t happy:

Let’s move past the warmed-over "why they hate us" bullshit in Harper’s statement, a shocking insult though it may be on our national day of mourning, and examine his statement on its merits......

The detailed "examination" that follows is well worth the read.

Nevertheless, overall the PM deserves high praise for his performance. And, because I’m a Harper fan, I’m willing to overlook that ‘blemish’ in his address. Because, though I know that 9/11 had zip to do with poverty, brutality and ignorance certainly played a role.

(h/t)