reed writes

News this week reveals the violent deaths of four young Afghan women separated by half the world, three in Canada allegedly at the hands of their parents and one mortally wounded by the gun of a careless Canadian soldier.
In the case for his defence, which will be unnecessary because he was only following procedure and will not be charged with anything, it is almost certain there was no premeditation other than he and his buddies-in-arms
volunteering to march trigger-ready into Afghanistan.

The three tragic drownings in the Kingston canal-lock may have been, according to police, an “honour-killing” in Middle-eastern tradition. There have been  more than a dozen such women-hating murders in Canada, according to experts.

This is not to address the question already asked a hundred thousand times across Canada in the past 72 hours: what are we supposed to be doing in Afghanistan?

It is to recognise that the running-down of what is politically unsustainable can always be traced to  events or situations which create a tipping-point.

Will it be this deathly culture-clash?

I can easily picture high-fiving going on in not just the Ignatieff war-rooms, these are good times for all ABCs.

Harper and his Cabal of Clowns have completely misread or mishandled our economy, National Security, medical-isotope supply and our international reputation as upholders of freedom and fairness.

The list is far too long to go into detail.

They have fed into the hearts(?) and minds of  the greedy, xenophobic and racist in Canada. They have taken us away from traditional Canadian thinking and towards the path of fascism. At the outset there were accusations of “Hidden Agenda!” within the Conservative government and as these dismal years roll by, I’m more inclined to believe in their substance.

We were also surveyed this week to reveal that a majority of Canadians would like to see a majority government after our next election.

This preference also smiles on the Grits.

Obviously, it would be a waste of time assessing Harper’s chances without  considering our folly in Afghanistan.

Canada’s armchair-warriors, who have no more idea of why our troops are in Afghanistan than my cat, are now outnumbered 56-44 by those who are slowly coming to the conclusion that this far-distant, undefined and expensive militarisation has been a mistake.

It seems the Harvard Hatter has to be vigilant on only one score: his own impatience. He dreams of leading with a Big Majority Hat, and Harper will deliver like gangbusters over the next two years as his incompetents stumble from one serious mistake to the next.

If Stephen Harper can turn the Conservative fortunes around during that time, I would be mightily impressed but I still wouldn’t vote for his lot.

I probably wouldn’t vote for the other one either, they equally and shamelessly warmonger while milking polls and media without ever showing a hint of integrity.

We have a long road ahead of us.

From lord anthony

Our Canadian diplomats have a hard enough job already without having to suffer understandably agressive retaliation to STUPID Canadian visa requirements.

Here is one of our senior civil servants trying to enter Mexico.

The dog is called Galloway.

Thanks again, Jason!

“Canadians assume that there are no dead in peacekeeping and that is why they like it.” - Jack Granatstein

Jack Granatstein is a self-proclaimed military historian who seems to think he can read the minds of Canadians.

He recently passed along the above gratuitous insult to the people of this country by purporting to explain why Canadians favour peacekeeping over war.

Granatsein stated – or mistated – that Canadians prefer peacekeeping because they think that there are fewer casualties. He implies the Canadian people…from whom our soldiers are drawn, by the way…are a lot of cowardly shirkers with their heads in the sand.

Granatstein ought to know better and the Canadian public deserve an apology.

Granatstein should understand that we’re not stupid. We know that there are casualties associated with the business of peacekeeping.

It could just be, however, that we recognize…as a People…that problems are not solved by fighting wars.

It could just be, Mr. Granatstein, that on the whole…Canadians are people of conscience.

The Granatstein quote appeared in a piece published yesterday on the CBC website… www.cbc.ca The title of the piece was itself a slap at peacekeeping:

“Lest we forget the cost of peacekeeping”

The article appears at a time of increased Canadian casualties in Afghanistan and increased public skepticism about that war. It makes a subtle effort to compare the process of peacekeeping, to what we have been doing in South Asia. It’s a kind of advertisement for the military industrial community.

Right off the bat – in the first 4 paragraphs – we get the point that the author a Mr. Robert Smol is attempting to make.

Smol compares apples with oranges by making the point that peacekeeping is every bit as dangerous as a full-scale, aggressive combat war. There is not even a nod to the higher moral values involved in peacekeeping.

When read carefully, it becomes crystal clear that both Granatstein and Smol are apologists for war and CBC is complicit by not publishing the other side of the story.

Smol closes his article with the following…

Looking at the larger picture, at least 122 Canadian peacekeepers have died while on UN assignment somewhere since 1956. The number would be much higher, of course, if we counted those who died during training or related exercises.

By comparison, 124 Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan between April 2002 and July 2009 (an average of 1.4 deaths a month).

Inexplicably Smol reduces the loss of lives of our soldiers to cold hard statistics.

Also, Smol fails to point out that at least four of our soldiers in Afghanistan were killed by American planes and that at least one Canadian Peacekeeper was murdered by the military of a close ally.

And of course he doesn’t mention the death of a Canadian diplomat in the Afghan war. The full article is available at the link below.

Shame.

But what did they do in Iraq?

• They devastated the country,
• destroyed its infrastructure,
• killed tens of thousands of people including innocent civilians,
• created hundreds of thousands of refugees, divided the country
• and fractured its society to such an extent that it may never recover fully.

Modern history teaches that military intervention seldom if ever, works. History also shows that when the intervener pulls out…whether the wars were successful or not… the situation begins to improve… often almost immediately. (more…)