This is partly about interacting with people who read my stuff. I answer all my mail personally. I think it’s only fair. (Besides, I don’t have a secretary).

Recently I received an email from an acquaintance of mine who criticized me for an article I had written for a little magazine in Kincardine Ontario Canada.

It’s called Marketplace  Magazine and my friend took issue with my call for a public inquiry into the Afghan detainee issue. He’s a prominent businessman in the area, so I won’t mention his name.

My response to his rebuttal

My friend started off by saying that it had been a long time since we’d seen each other and he wondered if I remembered him. Anyway, it’s all here in my response. (My friend’s points are indented and in red).

As a Libertarian by nature and a Conservative by history I thought I would give a rebuttal to your Liberal “Window” in January’s Marketplace (Kincardine).

Dear ____

Thanks for writing.

I noticed that you rather slyly slipped in that nasty little 7-letter word “liberal” to describe my article. (heheh). Personally, I’d say it’s a rather conservative piece (small “c”).

Firstly, like it or not, Canada is at war. To my mind it does not do any good for anyone to air our dirty laundry in public; at least during the conflict this should happen in camera. The word treason comes to mind for those who undermine their country’s war effort.

So – let me say this…theoretically we are not even at war. Our presence in Afghanistan is loosely based on a mandate from the United Nations called “The International Security and Assistance Force” (ISAF) resolution.

The media don’t talk too much about ISAF, because quite frankly, the media don’t get it.

ISAF was formed by the Security Council in December 2001, for one main reason, to legitimize the illegal American/British invasion of Afghanistan in October of 2001 by giving it a U.N. cover.

Today, almost 9 years later…the Americans are still in charge and we’re losing. (The publicly stated purpose of ISAF was to provide a period of protection for the new Afghan government under Karzai – which we installed over there).

We really do need some public discussion about this so-called “war”, because it’s only creating more and more terrorists…and Canadians do not know why we are there,  and why so many of our fine young people are being killed and damaged.

Secondly, we are visitors in a foreign country. We have little control, but we have good opportunity to impact, how these countries behave. I believe we have done this successfully given that the complaints are 2 years old and that things are not being done this way anymore. Torture certainly was/is the norm in these parts of the world. This is a good reason for Canada to be involved in the conflict if we can start to evolve these areas of the planet from the dark ages.

Secondly: The government of Hamid Karzai was created by the western governments plus the United Nations, so we’re not “visitors”.

Moreover, it’s a thoroughly corrupt government and I could give you any amount of evidence for that…

…but here’s one bit: Under the previous government Afghanistan was providing about 5-10% of the world’s heroin supply. The producers were mainly those Afghan warlords who were our allies.

Today, after us being there for almost Nine Years, Afghanistan supplies almost 90% of the world’s heroin.

A lot of that drug is exported through Pakistan, India and Russia and way too much of it gets onto Canadian streets. Some of the big poppy producers are relatives and friends of Karzai.

We can spend as much money as we want, sacrifice as many lives as we want, kid ourselves as much as we want, but this “war” is a losing proposition all around. As for the torture…if it happened under our watch we’re responsible…yesterday or 5 years ago.

Your next point -

Thirdly, it seems all the Canadian parties look at every issue as an opportunity to play politics. In this case using our military as the pawn in the election game. We need governments to look after the country not just focus on how it impacts their electioneering.

Third...I agree with you that the CF (Canada’s military) is the big victim here. Our soldiers have been mis-used by our government(s) – Chretien/Martin/Harper. They’re all basically the same. None of them wants to tell Canadians – including our men and women in uniform – the truth.

You mention looking after the country.

Well…as far as that’s concerned…Chretien/Martin handed over a balanced budget and a big surplus. They had paid down more than 20 billion on the national debt. And they had dealt with the 30-plus billion dollar deficit left by Mulroney. They gave us balanced budgets 6 years in a row, because they acted like real fiscally responsible conservatives. (small ‘c’).

• Now – we’ve got a huge deficit when we were told there would not be one;
• we’re taxing income trusts when we were promised that would never happen; (35 billion)
• we’ve had 2 elections in about 3 years even though they passed a law that says there is a fixed 4-year term; (600 million down the tube).
• parliament has been prorogued twice in about a year and 36 bills were killed as a result;
• we are likely facing a built-in (structural) deficit now, according to the budget officer, who was appointed by the present government.

To me – “looking after the country” means planning ahead and being good fiscal managers/stewards and balancing the books. I’m afraid I don’t see that happening.

Inquiries cost lots of time and money and in this case would change nothing that hasn’t already been changed.

It costs us about $600,000.00 to keep one soldier in Afghanistan for one year.

We’ve already spent billions and it looks like billions more will be spent.

We’ve lost 135 good people and hundreds have been damaged…for what?

Money spent on understanding more about what we’re doing over there would be money well spent.

And it would change one thing at least:  We’d be much better informed.

Open dialogue and differences of opinion are productive, and fun too! It’s great to live in Canada even if it isn’t perfect.

Open dialogue is fantastic! Unfortunately this government … just like others before it…would prefer that we citizens stay vegging happily in the dark.

Our politicians have transgressed international law by not ensuring – as soon as they knew – that people we arrested were not tortured.

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