U.S. hopes Canada will prolong its Afghan stay

[Bragi]

Source: Toronto Star

OTTAWA–Canada will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in 2011, even though U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates has hinted he would like to see the deadline extended, the federal government says.

Gates told reporters at Kandahar Airfield yesterday no country has worked harder than Canada and he would be disappointed to see Canadian troops leave the mission.

Read more: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/552549

---

I'm a Canadian, and I'd like American progressives to pay attention to what is happening here before it's too late, and before we all find ourselves having to join protests against "Obama's chosen war".

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of Canadians want our troops out of this pointless, unwinnable war, and we have had a hard time making our Bush-like conservative government understand that. However, after much resistance, we do have all-party agreement in Parliament that we are out of there in 2011.

So now, as above, we have Bush's former defence secretary -- now Obama's defence sectretary (!!) -- campaigning against the antiwar majority in Canada, in support of the pro-war right-wing minority.

Great.

This is happening because Obama is apparently determined to escalate this war to get Osama and al Qaeda, neither of whom are who we are fighting in Afghanistan. His increased military presence there will cause more death and destruction, and in the end, when we all finally up and leave, the same religious extremists, drug lords and tribal barons who have run Afghanistan for the last 200 years will be back in power.

Obama's position on Afghanistan is a disaster for Canada, for the world, and it will be a political disaster for him at home once everyone understands that the war he is escalating is wrong, and achieves nothing.

So I would urge American progressives to please send Obama and his people a simple message: Stop the war, don't escalate it.

- B

[tekisui]

1. Afghanistan will be the 21st Century Vietnam.

If we don't get out, NOW!

[awoke_in_2003]

5. Only one person

in history has ever defeated Afghanistan. That was Genghis Khan, and he only did it be killing EVERY ONE he saw.

[conspirator]

9. That's true. Genghis killed everything that moved, dogs included nt

[bigworld]

2. Afghanistan...

is a tough choice for many of us south of the border. One one hand, do we want to end the war and get our troops home? Yes. Do we want an ultra-fundamentalist, anti-progressive regime taking over? No, and not just because of Osama Bin-Laden.

I'm choosing to trust Obama on this one. I don;t think he's going to escalate the war there, just conduct it better so that it doesn;t become a quagmire.

[Bragi]

3. I trusted Obama on it so far...

I was aware of Obama's campaign promise to escalate the war in Afghanistan, but I honestly figured he would find a way to finesse this if he became President.

I cut him this slack because I knew that a lot of Dems supported the Afghan war as "a good war" in comparison to Iraq, which was clearly a bad war. Some Dems seemed to think that in order to credibly oppose the Iraq war, they had to show they were tough by supporting the Afghan war, and I figured Obama's Afghan policy was aimed at them, and intended to avoid being labelled as "antiwar" (god forbid!).

However, this is not a "good" war now, if it ever was. It is long-standing civil war between factions of religious extremists, drug barons and tribal lords. We are there to prop up the Karzai faction against the other factions, which includes some but not all Taliban.

The point is that eventually we will leave, and these factions will resume control of the country, as they have for the last 200 years.

This is a bad war. Obama should end it, not escalate it by sending in 20,000 more troops.

- B

[JohnyCanuck]

7. You summed it up quite well

However, this is not a "good" war now, if it ever was. It is long-standing civil war between factions of religious extremists, drug barons and tribal lords. We are there to prop up the Karzai faction against the other factions, which includes some but not all Taliban.

Ex-minister slates UK policy on Afghanistan

by Patrick Wintour

The former Foreign Office minister with responsibility for Afghanistan yesterday accused the country of being corrupt "from top to bottom", and said the international community had wrongly treated President Hamid Karzai with kid gloves.

SNIP

Breaking his silence on the issue, he told MPs: "Institutionally, Afghanistan is corrupt from top to bottom. There are few signs that the chaotic hegemony of warlords, gangsters, presidential placemen, incompetent and under-resourced provincial governors and self-serving government ministers has been challenged in any effective way by President Karzai.

"On the contrary, those individuals appear to be thriving, not least because Hamid Karzai has convinced himself that he cannot afford to sack or challenge the strongmen who, through corruption, brutality, power of arms or tribal status are capable of controlling their territories and fiefdoms."

SNIP

He said the government had to change its "daft" rhetoric on the war. "Forget the nonsense about being prepared to fight on the mountains and plains of Afghanistan for 30 years. People will not accept the notion that British families should send their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters to risk their lives fighting religious fanatics, tribal nationalists, corrupt warlords and heroin traffickers in one of the most godforsaken terrains on the face of the earth. The notion is daft, however much we may try to rationalise it by arguing that it is better to fight al-Qaeda over there than over here."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/11/afghanistan-kim-howells-corruption-karzai

Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time
By CRAIG MURRAY

SNIP

Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and 'value-added' operations.

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government ? the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons ? especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance ? to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.

President Karzai is a good man. He has never had an opponent killed, which may not sound like much but is highly unusual in this region and possibly unique in an Afghan leader. But nobody really believes he is running the country. He asked America to stop its recent bombing campaign in the south because it was leading to an increase in support for the Taliban. The United States simply ignored him. Above all, he has no control at all over the warlords among his ministers and governors, each of whom runs his own kingdom and whose primary concern is self-enrichment through heroin.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-469983/Britain-protecting-biggest-heroin-crop-time.html

[ohio2007]

11. ..so you figured he would lie his way out of campaign statements made in early Feb ?

Just how many other promises do you hope he breaks from his list ?
http://www.ontheissues.org/Barack_Obama.htm

hmmm

OBAMA: If the US has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out. I think that's the right strategy; I think that's the right policy. This is not an easy situation. You've got cross-border attacks against US troops. We've got a choice. We could allow our troops to be on the defensive and absorb those blows again and again, if Pakistan is unwilling to cooperate, or we start making some decisions. And the problem with the strategy that's been pursued was that, for 10 years, we coddled Musharraf, we alienated the Pakistani population, because we were anti-democratic. We had a 20th-century mindset that basically said, "Well, you know, he may be a dictator, but he's our dictator." As a consequence, we lost legitimacy in Pakistan. That's going to change when I'm president.




http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Barack_Obama_Foreign_Policy.htm#Asia

change has come to Pakistan since that debate question. Will intestinal fortitude follow through or will the children soldiers wear him down and abandon "change" in Afghanistan ?


Guess it depends how the media spins the honeymoon part of his admin information war.


We just want Osama. If the Taliban are smart,he said nothing about nation building.......

what a small price for peace and .... western withdrawl,
unless

they can't "dig him up"
then I guess it's out of their backward thinking hands in the near future

[Bragi]

6. You wrote:

Do we want an ultra-fundamentalist, anti-progressive regime taking over?

I think my point is that America doesn't get to make that choice, unless it intends to occupy ther country forever. The ultra-fundamentalist anti-progressives have been running (and ruining) the Pashtun homelands for 200 years. That won't change. No matter how many we kill, that is who will resume power once we leave.

This is a bad war, and progressives should start making noise about it now so as to convince Obama that he ought to proceed in some way here that doesn't involve escalating the fighting by sending in 20,000 more troops. It's a lose-lose strategy for everyone.

- B

[High Plains]

8. Uh, 20,000 more troops IS an escalation.

Personally, I don't give a shit who rules that godforsaken dust ball. We need to end this imperial adventure.

[pattmarty]

4. Ah yes, the coalition of the "leaving".

[ohio2007]

10. Suicide bomber, aged 12, kills three marines in Afghanistan

If that what they teach in Pakistan schools, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

snip

The bomb in Helmand, detonated by the youngest known suicide attacker against Western forces in the country, was followed by a mine blast that killed another marine. In Basra, a soldier was shot dead.


Both the Afghan attacks were in the Sangin district, the first at about 10am. Marines from 45 Commando were on foot patrol passing through a village when they were approached by a boy pushing a wheelbarrow containing the bomb, which exploded. An hour later, a Jackal armoured vehicle struck a mine, killing the fourth commando.



snip
Nato and Afghan government security forces also report the rising prevalence among enemy forces of young boys, mainly from madrassas, or religious schools, across the border in Pakistan.


The Independent has interviewed a 14-year-old boy, arrested on his way to a suicide mission, in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Shakirullah Yasin Ali said "If I had succeeded, I would be dead by now, I realise that. But those who were instructing me said that if I believed in serving God it was my duty to fight the foreigners. They said God would protect me when the time came."


Defence sources said that yesterday's attacks were being investigated. A senior officer said service personnel were obviously putting themselves at risk from suicide bombers by patrolling on foot, but that it was essential to mix with the local population and not alienate them by appearing only in heavily armoured convoys.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/suicide-bomber-aged-12-kills-three-marines-in-afghanistan-14106514.html

Does this boy qualify for virgins?

Bet his parents still think he's hitting the books of higher learning abroad.
.....keep sending the $
jmo