Supporting the Troops or the War
Janice Kennedy has a pretty good assessment of the Afghanistan debate in today’s Ottawa Citizen. My only slight quibble is that she does not mention the Liberals, who got us into this quagmire.
Janice Kennedy has a pretty good assessment of the Afghanistan debate in today’s Ottawa Citizen. My only slight quibble is that she does not mention the Liberals, who got us into this quagmire.
The Liberals did not start this quagmire in the southern part of Afghanistan.. they were put in the North, no combat going on and NATO asked them to go south with a promise that many more countries would help them. Also they were to pull out in 2007.
I did see a car with a sticker that looked like a ribbon but was more shaped like a question mark. Written on the sticker was “Question war.”
Scottie, I am no expert on the Afghanistan mission, but my sense is that it was originally scheduled through 2003. The Liberals extended it through 2007. The Conservative proposal to extend the mission through 2009 was put before Parliament and passed only because many Liberals voted for it. Although most of the intense fighting in Kandahar province has happened under the Conservative government, it was the Liberal government which announced in 2005 that Canadian forces would be deployed there.
I agree with Kennedy’s assignment of blame to the Conservatives for expanding and extending the mission. However, the Liberals should not escape responsibility for starting it.
1) The Liberals put ‘combat’ troops in Afghanistan during the first phase of the U.S. effort against the Taliban as a sop to George W. and co. because Canada had refused to go into Iraq . Subsequently, the Liberals agreed to a Canadian presence in Kabul, where their work was much prized by the locals.
2) I believe there was, at the end of the Martinites time in office, a commitment to increase the Canadian presence in the CITY of Kandahar.
3) However, the current aggressive combat activities in Hellmand and Kandahar provinces are exclusively a Conservative measure.
tb
I grow tired of the Liberal apologia.
The Liberals agreed to our involvement in this. Their current (empty) demands for a withdrawal at our scheduled date of withdrawal are empty Liberal posturing – just like their “commitment” to universal child care (no action from 1993 to 2004, followed by a panicked bit of blank cheque writing by the well intentioned Ken Dryden once their backs were to the wall) or universal healthcare (no action from 1919 until Saskatchewan showed that the policy was a. doable and b. popular).
On this, as ever, the Liberal policy is “Afghanistan if necessary, but not necessarily Afghanistan.”
Personally, I dissent from the emerging progressive consensus on this issue. However, I acknowledge that sound arguments exist against it (though I’m not convinced the left has been offering them).
That said, the Liberals should not be allowed to play bpoth ends against the middle yet again.