Stephen Harper: Lowering Expectations

Remember a few short weeks ago, Harper was pounding on the table demanding that NATO allies supply more troops for Afghanistan?

Well, now he's setting up to be satisfied with less.

Granted, Stephen Harper is like the foam-padded superhero costumes that you see these days - tries to make one look "big-and-strong", but reality is something different.

I've been fairly critical of Harper's performance on the world stage for a variety of reasons, but this whole business around Afghanistan is really beginning to annoy me. First of all, Harper is setting the stage to justify extending our involvement in Afghanistan even if the other NATO countries don't come through - which calls into question one of the key points of the motion voted on in parliament, namely that the engagement's extension was contingent upon a certain minimum level of ally involvement.

The second, and ongoing point here is way that Harper is using our troops' presence in Afghanistan primarily for partisan political gain. His incessant desire to further and further commit this nation to a questionable occupation of a foreign power, under conditions where the "enemy" is in fact the local population, is both poor foreign policy and stands to jeopardize Canada in other important ways such as placing us once again into the cycle of deficit spending to fund daily operations.