NDP leader says Canada should withdraw from Afghanistan mission

[bemildred]

OTTAWA (CP) - NDP Leader Jack Layton says Canada should pull its troops out of Afghanistan by February because the mission has gone astray.

Sniping at both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President George W. Bush, Layton said the Afghan mission has lost its direction. It has no clear goals, no exit strategy and no criteria to judge success, he said at a news conference Thursday.

"This is not the right mission for Canada," he said. "There is no balance. In particular, it lacks a comprehensive rebuilding plan and commensurate development assistance."

The focus in Afghanistan has changed from reconstruction to open war and Canada should have no part of it, he said. "Stephen Harper wants to take Canada in the wrong direction."

Canada.com

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. The idea was to kick some taliban ass & everything would be okay.

As it turns out, it isn't that simple.

[oblivious]

2. Thank God there's one sane party in Canada.

I feel sick that Canadian troops have gone from primarily peacekeepers to aggressors in foreign lands. A useless, hopeless, immoral mission.

[Spazito]

3. I agree with him, the Canadian mission needs to return to it's original

premise: peacekeeping and reconstruction. Layton has been a POS about a lot of things since the run-up to the last election, supporting harper from the word go but he knows another election is on the horizon and this is a big issue with Canadians.

[TheWatcher]

4. Earth To Canada

Take a GOOD LOOK at what has happened to your neighbor to the South over the past five years.

Do you want this to be your fate, your future?

Then you know what you have to do.

Get rid of Harper.

That's even less simple than 2 + 2= 4

And be quick about it. For your sake.

[Lisa]

6. an election next year, maybe?

In theory the minority government could collapse under a non-confidence motion at any time. In practical terms, though, Harper is probably going to gamble on Canadians not wanting another election so soon (and the Liberals not being willing to call for one either, since they haven't chosen their new leader yet). So there will likely not be a vote until next year at the earliest.

It irritates me that he will be using the softwood lumber deal as a way to play "chicken" (perhaps hoping that if he uses that as a confidence vote and survives, he will be able to claim that his relatively-inexperienced government will have more credibility).

And it irritates me even more, that he is also daring the other parties to call him on his rejection of Kyoto. He is supposed to be trotting out his "made in Canada" climate strategy in a couple of months. I don't know whether he will make that a confidence vote as well, but it wouldn't surprise me. Meanwhile, NOTHING is being done on that front. Programs have been cancelled, and our emissions are going up even faster (so we are worse off than under the Liberal plan, which at least paid lip service and was supporting carbon sequestration research). It's become abundantly clear that the Bush-style voluntary approach isn't working ... Harper has refused to acknowledge it, while people up North (and even in Alberta) are starting to demand some action. All this foot-dragging is costing us valuable time. It will affect our economy (other countries will be way ahead of us in terms of R&D and infrastructure upgrades), and every year -- every month -- we drag our feet, the consequences will be that much worse.


p.s. the new NDP MP for my city is really busting her buns -- she's shuttling back and forth to Ottawa, and she's one of the people who has the longest commutes (3 time zones). Her staff told me that she is scheduled a year ahead ... busy every day ... her constituents are getting their money's worth out of her, that's for sure! I actually vote in the district next to hers, and even if we don't get an election until this time next year, we still have to get started now, in terms of planning and trying to scrape together the funds. All the campaign people kind of groaned when we thought about how much we're going to have to do, for a chance of knocking the incumbent GOP-clone out of his seat. But you're right ... we have to get Harper out of there, as soon as possible. What would he do if he had a majority? He's already started to get arrogant (the way he treats the press, and the heavy-handed interference in the Lebanon evacuation, do not bode well).

[iverglas]

5. unfortunately, I suspect that my esteemed leader

is indeed looking to the ballot box. (There is of course not the slightest basis in fact for referring to him as a "POS", particularly if one is a hanger on of the large POS called the Liberal Party, but ... whatever.)

We are getting body bags. People don't like body bags.

Sadly, making national policy on the basis of an aversion to body bags seldom works out well. Did the USAmerican people learn any kind of lesson from Vietnam at all, before their body-bag reflex kicked in and their politicians couldn't overcome it? Nope. They were right back at the vicious imperialism game, all over the damned world.

Body bags and doing the right thing can co-exist. Sometimes there's a price to pay when one does the right thing and all that. If the wrong thing is being done, it needs to be stopped because it is the wrong thing to do, not because there is a cost associated with it.

Sometimes there's nothing wrong with "open war"; sometimes it's necessary. It's not an answer to whether we should be doing it, to call it what it is. The question is whether we should be doing it, whatever it's called.

I'd like to see Jack calling for a serious national discussion of our mission in Afghanistan, myself ... by which I don't really mean a 12-hour day of speeches in the House. Where's the bloody CBC these days? Not much in Afghanistan, that I've noticed. How the hell am I supposed to have an informed opinion when my national broadcaster, for starters, isn't telling me anything?

I have never been completely persuaded that we should not have gone to Afghanistan in the first place. And I resent the hell out of having a false dilemma forced on me all this time later: do it wrong or don't do it at all.

Of course, I imagine Jack feels that way every day he wakes up and realizes he's a small caucus in opposition to a minority government. Damned if you do, called a POS by a bunch of opportunistic forked-tongue Liberals if you don't ...

[deminks]

7. From an AFP article:

"Canadians want a foreign policy rooted in fact, not fear, one that is uniquely independent, not ideologically imported, and one that leads the world into peace, not follows the United States into wars," said Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party. "Not a
George Bush-style counterinsurgency war."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060831/wl_canada_afp/canadaafghanistan_060831205236

Smirky is getting a real name for his chimpself. /sarcasm

[Singular73]

8. Whys anyone happy about this?

If anything, we need to commit more troops in Afghanistan.

[tuvor]

11. What for?

And how will the success be measured?

If you know, would you please tell Harper so that he can tell the rest of Canada?

[Harper_is_Bush]

9. I disagree with him.

We should finish our comittment to 2009.

We should also tell Afghanistan and NATO that we're out of there in 2009 come hell or high water. There is a small chance that might motivate more progress by others.

[tuvor]

10. Harper's reaping the brinksmanship he sowed.

The softwood lumber deal won't go through like he hoped, and everyone's gearing up for an election before the year is out.

I'm sure Harper's not surprised. I received a vague "We're Protecting Canadians" postcard from him in the mail on Tuesday.