reed writes

“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.

Israel’s Prime Minister Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is running as fast as he can to keep up with Barack Obama. He has said he’ll make a major policy speech soon, mapping out his government’s “principles for achieving peace and security.”

Mr. Netanyahu said, “We want to achieve peace with the Palestinians and with the countries of the Arab world, while attempting to reach maximum understanding with the United States and our friends around the world.”

Netanyahu claims he has been reformulating Israeli peace policy. But some are skeptical. Ben Caspit, a columnist, wrote in the newspaper Maariv, that Mr. Netanyahu, “is now going to have to be particularly creative if he wants to renew trust between the United States and Israel.”

Israeli officials say they expect the Obama administration “to respect understandings” they say were reached — some written and some oral — with the Bush administration on building within existing settlements. The Obama administration, however, denies that any binding agreements on settlements were ever reached by anyone. And Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has been talking tough; she has pointed out that “there is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements. If they did occur, which, of course, people say they did, they did not become part of the official position of the United States government.”

In any case, the governments of the Arab world will not accept anything less than an Israeli withdrawal to the borders that existed after Israel’s pre-emptive war against the Arabs 41 years ago.

Unless Israel is willing to abide by its legal obligations, including U.N. resolution 242, there will be no lasting peace.

And that really is the bottom line.

U.S. President Barak Obama has indicated that he intends to be “honest” with Israel.

That would – if true – be a refreshing development in U.S. foreign policy; in fact it’s an essential precursor to an easing of tension in the Middle East.

On Wednesday Obama leaves on his first trip to the region and significantly – a visit to Israel is not on his agenda. 

On Thursday he will make a key speech from Cairo.

The question of just how honest he will be is now the subject of hot debate.

Obama’s adventure in honesty began with a call to Israel to “freeze settlement expansion”.

Most objective observers have applauded that admonition, but have also said it doesn’t go nearly far enough. In any case, Israel is likely to thumb its nose at the suggestion. 

So What Would be Enough?

The minimum that would be acceptable to the Muslim/Arab/Palestinian world would be this:

President Obama:

“It’s high time that we – The United States – were completely open and honest with our Israeli friends…both for their sake and for our own.

Over the past many decades, Israel has defied the international community in ways that have opened up a deep rift between it and a majority of nations. Before there can be peace for all in the Middle East that rift must be closed.

To close the rift, there must be a healing process and it must involve all the nations of the world, including Israel and the United States.

In order to begin that healing process, Israel must acknowledge that all of its settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, including The West Bank, constitute a violation of international law.

Once that acknowledgement is made, then – and only then – will it be possible to move forward with a viable peace process.

Thankyou.” 

(more…)

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh is an Afghan journalism student.

He distributed a report to fellow students and teachers at Balkh
University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on a matter.
A complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by
religious judges without being allowed legal representation and
sentenced to death.

Kambaksh was sentenced to death by an Afghan court, under the jurisdiction of NATO’s ally Hamid Karzai.

His crime: “blasphemy”. (more…)