Predictable

In the department of "no big surprise here", we have The Taliban mocking the departure of Canadian troops from Afghanistan.

The Taliban's information arm issued a statement Thursday to followers in Kandahar congratulating its fighters in the rural districts of Panjwaii, Zharey, Dand, Maiwand and Shah Wali Kot claiming that Canada has been defeated and has now fled the country. 

"Your sacrifices have brought us freedom. The beacons of your blood have lit the way to independence. Celebrate the victory and freedom from the Canadians," said the statement, written in Pashtu, but translated for The Canadian Press. 

It said that the Canadians followed Holland, Denmark, Australian, Poland, and Spain in "retreat and failure." Those nations have also begun withdrawing their forces from the International Security Assistance Force mission run by NATO.

If you are feeling surprised by this, you probably shouldn't be.  The brutal reality is that when Canada and other NATO forces invaded Afghanistan in 2002, they really just pushed the Taliban and its allies underground.

There is no reason to believe that they went away, or were in any way dismantled by the NATO occupation.  These groups seldom are easily dismantled.  When confronted with a large, organized force like NATO, they simply vanish into the woodwork and bide their time until the overwhelming forces decide to leave.  (A pattern which echoes through Afghanistan's history - invasion, occupation and eventual departure)

The current government will continue to stand for a while yet, but I do not expect Karzai to hold on to power for very long once the Taliban decide to push him out.

While the Taliban may be a reprehensible government, the process of getting rid of them is not one that can be completed in a decade.  It is one that ultimately requires at least three generations to undertake, and possibly longer.

The "Why We Shouldn't Leave Afghanistan" Propaganda

In the last few days, there has been an upswing in media reporting on the consequences of western powers leaving Afghanistan before the country is stable. Perhaps we should be appropriately skeptical and wonder aloud if "stable" is a code phrase for having a nominally friendly puppet government in control?

Up first is Time Magazine talking about the horrors of what the Taliban does to women ... it's not pretty by any means. Cutting someone's nose and ears off for leaving a bad marriage is certainly abusive in the extreme - and it is particularly shocking to someone with a westernized sensibility about the world.

Then, as if to reinforce the issue of female subjugation, we get a little article about a mosque in Iran offering "temporary marriages". In western cultures we called these brothels in the not so distant past.

I'm not going to spend a great deal of time indulging my sense of outrage over the mistreatment of women in Iran, or Afghanistan, come to that. I think that these countries are all a good couple of hundred years behind the times when it comes to how they treat half of their population.

The real question that is in my mind is whether the "West" has any moral or ethical justification for attempting to intervene in Afghanistan?

The current war of occupation in Afghanistan has its roots in America's reaction to the events of 9/11/01. Ostensibly, the purpose was to go after Osama bin Laden and his allies within the Taliban-led government. While the Taliban government was overthrown, there hasn't been a great deal of success with hunting down bin Laden. (Not that this comes as any great surprise)

At this point in time, what we have appears to be a barely functional government in Kabul whose influence doesn't extend beyond that city. The rest of the country is being overtaken - province by province it seems - by a growing Taliban insurgency that is becoming more emboldened as times goes by. (An insurgency that seems to be fuelled by resources and advice from a supposed ally in the "War on Terror", I might add...)

While there is certainly an emotional case to be made for continued presence in Afghanistan, is there a reasonable moral or ethical case to be made for continuing an occupation that started a decade ago?

Morally, there's a certain obligation to "put things back together" after the invasion which toppled the Taliban government. However, anyone who thinks that the current situation in Afghanistan is a "rebuilding" exercise is fooling themselves. At best, this is buying time for a shattered Afghanistan military to be rebuilt. Anything that is done while western troops continue to "enforce the peace" at gunpoint is going to be seen with suspicion by the Afghan people - and rightly so.

Ethically, I just can't justify long term military control being exercised over a foreign country. At best it comes out as a power grab; at worst it's an attempt to impose our values on people whose context and experience have led them to different places. It seems the height of hubris and arrogance to think that once NATO troops leave Afghanistan that the situation will be substantively different than happened after the Soviets left. (and, if one looks through history, military occupations of that region aren't exactly sources of long term change in the society)

It might sound harsh, but I think Afghanistan will have to sort itself out. I do not see any reason to believe that continued intervention there will have any positive effects ... at least not within the next two or three generations ... and I don't think we can afford to occupy that country for multiple generations.

The Speaker Made The Right Decision

It's about time that someone slapped Harper around for his attitude towards Canada's government.

I'm glad to see that the Speaker had the wisdom to actually talk to other countries that have Westminster-based parliamentary governments. That singular move would have tilted the balance of decision away from Harper's claim of what amounts to US-style "executive privilege".

Milliken noted that in other countries, they get around the national security issue by swearing in MPs who see sensitive material.

The documents at issue are believed to contain information related to the alleged torture of prisoners transferred to Afghan authorities by Canadian soldiers.

Of course, this would be the simple and sensible thing to do. A reasonable government would have long ago done precisely this. But, the Harper government is not reasonable, is it?

We're Fighting For This?!?

Okay, here's one that should get religious right wing thoroughly up in arms over our involvement in Afghanistan. Child Prostitution. That's right, our Army is in Afghanistan fighting - and dying - so that the rich and powerful men can buy male child prostitutes.

... the horrific tradition called bacha bazi, which means “boy play.” Boys, some as young as 11, often orphans, are bought by former warlords and powerful businessmen, then trained to sing and dance for the entertainment of male audiences. They then become sex toys for anyone who can afford to pay their masters

How lovely. Essentially this is institutionalized pedophilia and child prostitution.

Would somebody care to explain to me just how we are 'making a difference' here? If there is one thing that this, along with the steady growth of the Taliban's influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, demonstrates it is that foreign intervention in that region is like sticking your hand in a bucket of water - remove your hand from the bucket, and the water doesn't look any different. (BTW - has anybody else noticed that nobody's ever found Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, the man whose supposed presence there was the ostensible reason for invading in the first place?)

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to believe that there is either a moral or ethical imperative that justifies the war in Afghanistan, much less Canada's involvement in it.

Dear Conservatives:

Sandbagging is not equivalent to actually opening the books for parliamentary review.

Apparently, Canada's current government doesn't understand that Parliament is the highest authority in the country - and its denizens have every right to have access to documents regarding the situation in Afghanistan. All that Harper is doing by appointing former judge Iacobucci is stalling. Put it on the table - all of it - where Canada's elected MPs can inspect it.

There's nothing wrong with insisting that the MPs treat the documents as confidential - but there's a whole lot wrong with delaying the process indefinitely by slapping a "retired judicial review" in the middle. The issue here is whether Canada's policy and actions in Afghanistan have made the country complicit in the commission of war crimes. If that is the case, then Canadians deserve to know the story.

The Conservative party's actions reek of cover-up - and a far more egregious cover-up than Brian Mulroney's undeclared envelopes of money from Schrieber.

And Then There's Reality

As if to further demonstrate the extent of the HarperCon$ lies to Canadians, the following turd falls from the sky and lands on Mackay's shoulder:

Three federal cabinet ministers and a senior government official met the head of the International Red Cross in the fall of 2006 as the humantarian organization tried to focus Canada's attention on alleged abuses in Afghan prisons, The Canadian Press has learned.

Precisely what Jakob Kellenberger told Peter MacKay, Gordon O'Connor, Stockwell Day and Robert Greenhill, then the president of the Canadian International Development Agency, in the Sept. 26, 2006 meetings is blanketed by diplomatic secrecy.

McKay was then Foreign Affairs minister, O'Connor was at Defence and Day was Public Safety minister overseeing Corrections Canada officers in Kandahar.

From my point of view, this is no surprise. Harper and his band of thugs have been so intellectually dishonest since they were elected, no amount of lies is really shocking. However, this Afghanistan prisoner transfer issue is a serious black eye for Canada on the world stage.

Along with Harper's obstructionist approach to the discussions in Copenhagen this past week, it can leave little doubt that under Harper, Canada's credibility as a significant, sincere player on the world stage has been seriously undermined...and it will only get worse the longer Harper is allowed to reside at 24 Sussex Dr.

About that secure transmissions thing...

Insurgents tapping Predator Drone video

I don't know if I should laugh or cry. Frankly, it's quite hilarious to realize that the insurgents know precisely what kind of surveillance the Americans are using - and the fact it can be done with a $26 piece of software is just added irony.

H/T: Canadian Cynic

Colvin Testimony Part II

That's going to leave a mark. Essentially, Colvin takes every single talking point that the HarperCon$ have played and turns it inside out with facts.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon has suggested that I “availed myself of the prerogatives of a whistleblower,” and that the government accordingly granted me whistleblower protections.

I am not a whistleblower. Rather, I am a loyal servant of the Crown who did his job in Afghanistan to the best of his abilities, working through internal and authorized channels.
...
Contrary to Minister Cannon’s suggestion, I testified in Parliament because I was summoned by the Committee and legally compelled to speak the truth. I feel it is my duty as a public servant, when commanded to appear before the Parliamentary Committee, to give evidence that is full, frank and fair. I feel duty bound to be frank and thorough in responding to the Committee’s inquiries.

It's not as if this is any real surprise, but it is refreshing to see a member of the civil service not being cowed by Harper's thuggery.

Colvin's Letter ... all of it.

Hmmm...So It's A Good Thing To Lie?

Apparently, Tony Blair thinks so. After all a pack of lies is what he used to justify participating in Bush II's invasion of Iraq.

In light of recent revelations of our own government's handling of the situation in Afghanistan, I'm beginning to think that there's a sense of entitlement among the neoCons in general - one that justifies lying to the public as long as it fills their needs.

Replacing Lie #1 With Lie #2

Having been soundly beaten about for lying about prisoner transfers, we now find Harper spewing more BS:

The Prime Minister said the facts have been clear for several years. He said in 2006 the military suspected abuse of an Afghan prisoner and steps were taken to correct it.

This bunch changes their stories more often than their underwear. A few days ago, they were swearing up and down that there was "no credible" evidence to Mr. Colvin's allegations. Yesterday, they had the good General spouting the party line - even when there was evidence to the contrary in the public sphere. Today, Harper's trying to claim that they did the right thing?

I don't know how anybody can possibly believe the lies coming out of this government - lies that are being told at the expense not just of Canadian soldiers, but at the price of Canada's reputation abroad.

Credibility Test

Who are you going to believe? The soldiers that were on the ground and recorded the events at the time they happened, or a General who wasn't anywhere near the scene?

Gen. Walter Natynczyk, Canada's chief of defence staff, told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that Canadian troops questioned the man who was picked up during operations in Zangabad. But it was the Afghans who took him into custody, Natynczyk said.

"We didn't take this person under custody," he said.

Funny, that's not what the soldiers who were present claim happened:

In one well-documented case in the summer of 2006, Canadian soldiers captured and handed over a detainee who was so severely beaten by Afghan police that the Canadians intervened and took the detainee back. Canadian medics then treated the man's injuries. The incident is documented in the field notes of Canadian troops, recounted in a sworn affidavit by a senior officer and confirmed in cross-examination by a general.

I'll take the troopers on the ground for credible evidence, thank you. Natynczyk wasn't there, so he's working from a politicized, sanitized version of the situation, and was no doubt ordered to make his statements to lend credibility to the crumbling façade of Peter Mackay's lies on this subject.

So, not only is the government lying to Canadians about this situation, they are failing to explain the lack of action when it was clear that there was evidence of Afghan officials mistreating prisoners - regardless of who captured them.

Last Week's Lies Are Inoperative

Remember Harper & Co. swearing up and down that there was absolutely no evidence to support allegations of prisoner abuse?

Not so much.

So ... I wonder what this week's lie will be to cover up last week's that has been disproven?

Dear Mr. Adler: PFO

Charles Adler published a particularly noxious screed in the National Post the other day - presumably at the behest of the knuckle-draggers in the PMO that want to silence critics of the government's handling of of Afghan prisoners.

The fundamentals of Adler's tirade are nothing more than the usual "you don't support the troops" line.

This is incorrect. The issue isn't the troops. It's the orders that they have been given - and those come from command and the politicians. Let's be absolutely clear on that matter. The decisions about the handling of individual detainees happens on the ground, in the context of the moment and the standing orders the troops operate under. The orders they are given come from the command structure, and ultimately are directed substantially by the politicians.

So ... the issue here is the orders that told troops to turn over prisoners to a questionable regime. We already know that Mr. Colvin's e-mails made it to the Department of Foreign Affairs ministerial offices (then occupied by Peter Mackay).

It's apparent that at several points in time the military's command hierarchy put the brakes on those transfers over the course of 2006-2007, but subsequently resumed them.

The politicians involved did nothing to correct the situation - or if they did, it was so slowly as to be meaningless in terms of dealing with the issues.

The issue today is simple - why were our politicians so slow to address the issues of prisoner handling? AND - why are the Conservatives being so obstructive about getting the facts out?

Make no mistake, the war in Afghanistan is a war of occupation. We (NATO forces) are the invaders, and what is happening on the ground there has happened repeatedly in the past - not just the Soviet occupation, but every attempt to control that region over the millenia of recorded history. Canada is paying a high price in 'blood and treasure' to prosecute this war of occupation, and nobody has ever put forward a convincing case that Canada's security is truly benefiting from our presence over there. (Lots of jingoism, no substantive facts)

The issue is not about "supporting the troops" - it's about a government that doesn't understand why we are there in the first place, and has clearly lost its moral compass.

The Question, Mr. Harper, Is When Did You Decide To Lie To Canadians About Afghanistan?

As usual, when confronted with a real political problem, Stephen Harper turns to the usual "when did you stop beating your wife" tactics:

Harper said that living in a time "when some in the political arena do not hesitate before throwing the most serious of allegations at our men and women in uniform, based on the most flimsy of evidence, remember that Canadians from coast to coast to coast are proud of you and stand behind you, and I am proud of you, and I stand beside you."

Canadians who have their brains switched on have long since realized that Canada's armed forces in Afghanistan are carrying out the orders they receive from their political masters in Ottawa.

The real issue is no longer about who knew what about prisoner mistreatment in Afghanistan, but it is now about the litany of blatant lies and distortions that have been spewed forth by Harper, Mackay and other members of the Conservative government.

Mr. Mackay has changed his story so many times in the last week or two that I'm not sure he even knows what the reality is himself. Mr. Harper's defense is what? To accuse critics of "not supporting the troops".

This isn't about the troops - it's about a government which lies blatantly to Canadians, and changes its story more quickly than it does its underwear.

Inquiry Time

With the partisan nonsense that has been bouncing around this week regarding Afghan prisoner/detainee transfers, it's past time to call a public inquiry - one that isn't bounded by arbitrary rules that the HarperCon$ have come up with.

Harper has tried very hard to muzzle, or render ineffectual, the current parliamentary investigation, and I think in this case Amnesty International has it right:

We are, however, shocked, that at least 12 of his reports were not disclosed by the government during the course of Federal Court proceedings in 2007 and 2008, despite the fact that they were obviously of direct relevance to the issues before the Court and were certainly covered by requests for disclosure of documents that had been made by our legal team. Equally troubling has been Richard Colvin’s testimony as to the ways in which he indicates his reports were dismissed and ignored by senior officials. That your government has responded primarily by seeking to discredit and impugn Mr. Colvin’s credibility has been, frankly, wholly unacceptable.
...
In our view, therefore, there is no other option open other than to immediately convene a full, public Commission of Inquiry into all aspects of the laws, policy and practice that has governed Canada’s approach to handling prisoners in Afghanistan. We call on you to do so without delay.

The real issue here is what is the Harper Government trying to cover up? I can think of a few possibilities.

If Colvin's Testimony is so "unbelievable" ...

Then we should be asking some really tough questions of Defense Minister Mackay in light of his top General's recent comments.

"We indeed did stop the transfer more than one time," he said. "At the same time, I don't want to throw out more information. There's a process that's undergoing and I know that the witnesses will be called forward for that process and give their testimony."

So ... Mr. Mackay, would you care to square last week's knee-jerk attempt to dismiss Mr. Colvin's testimony with the actions of the very department you are the minister for? Clearly the Canadian Armed Forces believed that something wasn't entirely right in the first place, so that tells me that Mr. Colvin's concerns had their share of validity - even in the absence of "absolute proof".

Just one more example of the Harper gov't lying to Canadians for political gain.

Under All The Bluster ...

Is a reality.

The HarperCon$ have struggled mightily to silence Richard Colvin, failing that they then attempt to discredit not just what he says but the man himself.

Peter Mackay's attempt to discredit Colvin's sources and interviews is an interesting exercise in missing the point:

"There has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian forces,” he said.

However, there is considerable evidence out there of prisoners being turned over to the Afghan government, and being tortured.

We also know that we suspended prisoner transfers at one point, and the HarperCon$ tried to cover up the reasons for that.

So ... what precautions, if any, did the HarperCon$ order Canada's Armed Forces to undertake regarding the handover of prisoners? I'm putting better than even odds that the sum total of those precautions was nothing. In short, they continued to do exactly as Bush II did, and turn a blind eye to the abuse that prisoners were (and likely as not, are) being subjected to when turned over to the Afghan authorities.

In short, through a series of acts of omission, the Canada has become complicit in what are internationally recognized as war crimes - and Harper will do just about anything to cover it up.

I'm not saying that everything that Mr. Colvin has said is true - but the viciousness of the government's response, along with the desperation that has been quite apparent in their actions to suppress the current (and very limited) inquiry, leaves something lying about that does not pass the "smell test".

If it takes a judicial inquiry - and one that is unfettered by desperate politicians trying to save their electoral hides in particular - then we should undertake one on Afghanistan immediately. Canada cannot, and should not, ever be party to war crimes - or even have the appearance of being party to them.

Flanagan Sort of Gets It

I suspect that Beelzebub is shovelling a dollop of snow out of his demesne today, Tom Flanagan wrote something that I almost agree with in the Globe and Mail this morning.

The reasoning seemed persuasive, but it neglected the limitations of Western power that have manifested themselves so visibly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yes, Tom ... if the NeoCon warmongers had been paying attention in 2001, they could have saved taxpayers billions of dollars, and countless military families the pain of losing their loved ones or having them come back maimed for life - because it was obvious back then that all out military invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq was doomed to fail in the first place.

As far back as 2001/2002, I remember arguing that you don't fight shadows with heavy armor - you fight shadows with shadows. You fight shadows by removing the dark crevasses that they hide in by shedding light on them. All out conventional war creates more shadows, it does not eliminate them. It never has and never will.

What the NeoCons don't understand about foreign policy can be summed up in the Afghanistan and Iraq experiences - military force is the threat you use in today's world. The real work happens much more covertly. You don't defeat terrorists by blowing up the compound that one of their leaders lives in, you defeat them by undermining their activities and efforts.

The question we face now, is what to do with Afghanistan and Iraq. Long term military occupation is unlikely to feasible or politically palatable to taxpayers, and it is hard to imagine that we have any real allies in those countries right now.

You Only Just Figured This Out, Coren?

Apparently, a little glimmer of reality finally penetrated the TheoCon fog of Michael Coren's mind:

A War Built On Lies

We have been lied to about that terrible war and only a fool would think that we are suddenly being told the truth about the current ones.

It was horrific then and horrific now that good people have to die for agendas rather than causes.

Coming from a man who has argued for dropping nuclear weapons on Iran, or all of the great things our troops are fighting for in Afghanistan, it's more than a small surprise that Coren is finally starting to question the truth value of the reasons we have been fed about why we are engaged in Afghanistan, or why the US attacked Iraq.

When we are being told stories about why we are going to war by our politicians - and their allied commentators - we should treat them with more than a little skepticism.

Canada's Presence In Afghanistan

Eric Margolis nicely sums up the problems with military occupation in Afghanistan, and ends up recommending that it's time for Western powers to get out of that mess and let the people who actually live there take control over their own destiny.

We can't solve Afghanistan's social or political problems by waging a cruel and apparently endless war. A senior British general just warned his troops might have to stay for another 40 years. (He later retracted).

The western powers, Canada included, have added to the bloody mess in Afghanistan. Time to go home.