Wednesday, April 02, 2008

I can think of one program to slash

Harper thinks he's playing smart with our economy ... or perhaps I should say puppetmaster Flanagan does.

However, I can think of one program that's amazingly slashable - it's called the War in Afghanistan that Harper is so high on. It's costing Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars - and if we are heading into an economic slowdown, I can think of a lot of places to spend that money other than prosecuting a questionable occupation of a foreign power.

H/T: Commenter Stephanie (via e-mail)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My only problem with pulling out of Afghanistan is that we already know what a Taliban government looks like. The main losers are women and children.

ShadowPages said...

Veronique,

I agree with you on that front, however, we also have to recognize that an occupation that is perceived by the people of a region as hostile or punitive is unlikely to succeed either in stabilizing the region or bringing about the kind of cultural change that you and I might desire.

Besides, I don't think Canadians have either the resources or desire to be involved in occupying Afghanistan for multiple generations. (a la what the British Empire did in India - and even there the degree of "success" in meeting the British Empire's goals is certainly open to debate - the only 'takeaway' is that the British left the infrastructure for a civil government behind - both culturally and logistically)

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