FROM KICK ASS TO KISS ASS

SENDING OUR PEOPLE TO DIE

I just read about the wounding of the six Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. One was hurt very seriously and is in critical condition. These are young men who will never again be able to live a normal life. One of them may die, adding to the already far too high casualty list of dead Canadians…murdered we should say by a half-baked foreign policy that has no roots in Canadian tradition and which simply attempts to ape the policies and propaganda of the Bush administration.

It’s sad and pathetic that we- well- that our political representatives, both Liberal and Conservative, along with the man who hopes to become the next Liberal leader, have sent our young people into a dirty war for which they were never prepared and for which they do not have the proper equipment. Several armoured vehicles have been completely or partially destroyed at a cost of millions of dollars.

This is a war, which cannot be won by a ridiculously small contingent of western soldiers and less-than-enthusiastic public support.

It makes you wonder what General Rick Hillier was thinking a few months ago, when he spoke of killing the enemy “scumbags” and “kicking ass” in Afghanistan. Now we seem to have embarked on a different strategy…even as our men and women in uniform are being cut down in cold blood. The Canadian public, it seems, has little stomach for “ass kicking” on the one hand…and on the other, Hillier has apparently acknowledged that it doesn’t work. There’s nothing like a little “on-the-job-training” to focus the military brain.

The failure of the “kick ass” strategy, combined with lukewarm public support for the mission has prompted a shift from “kick ass” to “kiss ass”. We phase out killing “murderous scumbags” and instead we do a little “scumbag-schmoozing”.This was as predictable as the appearance of daylight at dawn.

Reporters are called in to witness touchy-feely sessions between a senior Canadian officer- Lt. Colonel Hope and a tired old Taliban fighter/terrorist- Mr. Ibrahim. Public relations is now the name of the game and amnesty is replacing the old boastful threats. If Ibrahim will just co-operate, his past crimes will be forgiven…even though this terrorist may have murdered or planned the murder of a Canadian soldier.

It seems that Hillier’s “kick-ass” phase of the mission has come to an end…at least we don’t hear much about it these days, as more and more of our people are killed and maimed. Instead Hillier and his bosses are implementing a kind of Taliban Terrorist Registry…similar to the Liberal’s about-to-be-trashed, domestic gun registry. The difference is that registering Talibans promises to be even more costly and many of our own will die along the way.

The most pathetic side of this story, however, is that the Taliban Registry/Amnesty idea could have been introduced months or even years ago at a tremendous saving in terms of both dollars and Canadian lives.