Afghanistan: Why we should be there (or not), how to conduct the mission (or not) & when to leave

[Kat Stevens]

Touche', mon chum.

 

[sgf]

As you said, we all seem to be.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is an interesting article by Canadian historian Robert Bothwell, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail that argues that Stéphane Dion is just following an old, well established Liberal, perhaps Canadian, tradition of being very, very cautious about saying “yes” to international adventures:

War, peace and the Liberal party

Robert Bothwell

From Saturday's Globe and Mail
February 16, 2008 at 12:00 AM EST

Stéphane Dion has no easy task when he trudges down the hall to meet and greet the ravenous media. He has to look fierce and sound tough, so as to seem to be a fearless leader, but not so fierce and tough as to leave hostages to an unknowable fortune. Hillary Clinton has been finding that her vote in the U.S Senate to authorize George Bush's war in Iraq has legs, alerting Americans to the possibility that she may not be the wise leader they are seeking in 2008. That's the trouble with political drama: unexpected endings, and a denouement sooner than the protagonist would wish.

Mr. Dion has reason to be cautious about Afghanistan, and caution is an old Canadian tradition, particularly a Liberal one. The tradition is founded in a painful reality: Any Canadian leader, any prime minister, facing demands for Canada's help or participation in a foreign crisis, only has to say yes once. Saying no later, as today's politicians of almost any stripe have discovered, is next to impossible. Going in is easy; finding the exit later is difficult at best. Mr. Dion can console himself that he's not the first Liberal leader to find himself in this position. Several of his predecessors, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, prime minister from 1896 to 1911, Mackenzie King, prime minister in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, and Lester B. Pearson, external affairs minister in the 1950s and prime minister in the 1960s, all faced similar situations. Do their actions then provide any kind of model or pattern today?

The pressures to say yes are formidable, but confusing and contradictory. Canadians expect their country to be a good alliance partner, a good neighbour and a good international citizen, all at the same time. But in international affairs it is not only domestic expectations — living up to one's self-image — that count. There is another, useful rule, a diplomat's version of the Hippocratic oath: "First, do nothing stupid."

Laurier was the first to say yes, in 1899, to joining in a British imperial war in South Africa. Public pressure in Canada forced him into what was meant to be a splendid little war, on behalf of the mighty British Empire and against a feeble, if evil, foe. It did not work out as advertised. The war dragged on, the Empire looked increasingly feeble, and casualties mounted. It took the British three years, not the expected three months, to find a way out.

WORLD WAR TAUGHT HESITATION

Fifteen years later, in 1914, Canadian sentiment was overwhelmingly in favour of joining in the First World War. Politically, there was no choice, and Laurier, by then leader of the Opposition, did not even consider saying no. But that was a war without an exit, a catastrophe internationally and domestically. Its effects, almost all baneful, are still being felt. In Canada, it divided English- from French-Canadians. In Quebec, it is still the stuff of nationalist and separatist legends: how English-Canadians imposed a British war on French Canada.

It was a caution to politicians of the next generation. Laurier's successor as Liberal leader, Mackenzie King, faced as prime minister another crisis in 1922. The British prime minister, Lloyd George, proposed to go to war with Turkey; he believed that Turks were evil, and the British Empire must resist evil. King divined that there was no obvious exit from such a war, and that in this case British leadership was not intelligent. Carefully and cautiously, King refused. The British government soon fell, a victim of its own strategic folly, luckily before war could actually break out. The Conservative leader, Arthur Meighen, had a different response. When Britain (or duty) called, Canada should have but one answer: "Ready, aye ready!"

But that answer only came in 1939, when Great Britain faced a real menace, one Canadians could see and hear, and, just as important, when they could draw their own conclusions.

King was not just allergic to the call of empire. He deeply mistrusted multilateral actions, too — including those of the League of Nations, which Canada belonged to. It was a "league of notions," he snorted. He was not going to allow Canada to be held hostage to a bunch of starry-eyed idealists in Geneva. In this, King was no better than his allies, the British especially, but he was no worse. Of course, he accepted Munich, Britain's futile attempt to appease Hitler in 1938; but it is often forgotten that if war had come at the time of Munich, Canada, and King, would have joined it.

Lester B. Pearson, Liberal external affairs minister in the 1950s, is famous for receiving a Nobel Peace prize in 1957 for his actions in halting war in the Middle East, around the Suez Canal. As best we can tell, English Canadians at the time largely disapproved of what he had done, because Canada had not gone along with a British imperial adventure. Egypt had nationalized the Suez Canal, which travelled through its territory. But, as the result of imperial depredations, the canal was British property, and the British prime minister, Sir Anthony Eden, proposed to show the Egyptians what was what, notably that the Empire was still mighty and should prevail, in Egypt or anywhere else. The Egyptian dictator, Nasser, was labelled "the Hitler of the Nile." It was time to resist "Hitler" and heed the call of duty. Militarily, the British plan was demented. Even if the British won in the short term, they did not have the strength to stay in Suez, as British military planners knew very well. Politically, Eden's project was lunatic, because it threatened to divide the Western alliance, since he had failed to secure American support.

Canada's policy over Suez was equivalent to taking the car keys away from a drunk in a bar. Perhaps the drunk would have felt more heroic heading out on the road, but the political hangover would have been unending and the other consequences frightful. Interestingly, the strongest approval for Mr. Pearson's actions came from professional British diplomats, who understood, better than Sir Anthony, what the stakes were, and what Britain had been spared thanks to Mr. Pearson's skillful diplomacy.

NO PEARSONIAN DOGMA

Mr. Pearson had been a professional diplomat before he became a politician, and he believed that part of Canada's clout, internationally, was to act as an honest broker. He did not believe in conciliation for conciliation's sake, but if Canada was to serve on international bodies, it was important that it deal with things as they were, and not act purely out of sentiment, or stumble about in an ideological fog. And, as a Canadian nationalist, Pearson liked to believe that Canada had not become a sovereign country in vain — that the Canadian government should have some knowledge and even control over its foreign policy and not follow blindly where others led.

"History repeats itself," Karl Marx wrote, "first as tragedy, then as farce." In Pearson's lifetime, the sequence was the reverse. Having prevented farce at Suez, he was condemned to witness tragedy, in the form of the Vietnam War. This time he could do nothing about it. The American president, Lyndon B. Johnson, scented Communist evil in Vietnam, to which he must apply a forceful remedy. Some Americans, probably including the Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, feared what might happen, and begged Mr. Pearson to help them, before the United States was dragged into an unending jungle quagmire. Put another way, Mr. Johnson had no exit strategy in Vietnam but victory. It was a strategy that had been applied in the First World War, with notable, and notably unfortunate, results. Mr. Pearson spoke out in a speech at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1965. It was a call for a pause in the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, but it was in effect a call for a pause in the war and for a political solution to the conflict. Such a solution would not have been victory or anything close to it, as Mr. Johnson knew very well, and he reacted furiously in a famous shouting match directed at Mr. Pearson. Mr. Johnson's rage, as we now know, masked the very real disquiet he and many of his advisers actually felt about what they were doing — disquiet they concealed under bluster. But bluster was not a sensible tactic in Vietnam.

Canada's antipodean twin, Australia, decided differently over Vietnam, joining the war and sending troops. And the Australian government harvested the consequences. By the end of the war, Australian soldiers were urged not to wear their uniforms in public at home, such was popular disapproval of the enterprise. In return, their government was informed, but not consulted, by American policy-makers. Australia might be an ally, but it was an American war.

So what should Mr. Dion say, when it comes to Afghanistan? In the short term, he has to do what Laurier did in 1899 and 1914: grin and bear it. In the longer term, as Hillary Clinton might now wish, he should seek another model. He should quote our first prime minister, the Conservative Sir John A. Macdonald, when he dismissed the notion of sending Canadian troops to help the British Empire in a war in the Sudan. "Why should we waste money and men in this wretched business?" Macdonald exclaimed. He sent neither.

Robert Bothwell is director, International Relations Program, at Trinity College in the University of Toronto. He is also the author of "Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945-1984" and "The Penguin History of Canada."

One can take issue with a few of Prof. Bothwell’s assertions (the “hesitation” we learned from our First Wordl War experiences was not uniquely Canadian, most of the world shared it and the Vietnam War was not President Lyndon Johnson’s very own war: President Kennedy started the adventure (building on a modest training mission left over from the Eisenhower administration). But those quibbles about very Canadian intellectual blinders aside, Bothwell has the broad sweep right: it is too easy to say “yes,” and, having said it, changing over to “no” is very, very difficult.

I do not agree with Bothwell’s conclusion. There is no other model available to any responsible first world nation – only variations of the current “stand by your friends” one. We can and should try our best to constrain American unilateralism which, post 1960, has been very poorly managed – even when the “vision thing” has been clear, but we should not lose sight of the fact that the ‘shared vision’ of a half dozen or so modern, sophisticated, secular, law abiding democracies has proven to be almost always right over the past century or so. That’s the right model; it is the Truman/St Laurent model, we need to refine it, not replace it.

 

[MarkOttawa]

WLMK's policy at the start of WW II was much like the current Liberal approach to Afstan: as little combat as possible. While English Canadian (yes, there were still such people then) public opinion compelled King to send the 1st Canadian Division to the UK in 1939, he intended to focus the Canadian war effort on the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan--training pilots in Canada--and on the RCN, with minimal involvement in combat (and thus casualties) overseas.

Events, and further English Canadian pressure, forced a much greater and bloodier involvement than King had intended (in order to avoid problems with Quebec).
http://www.junobeach.org/e/4/can-tac-air-bca-e.htm

The Canadian government was not too receptive, however, to the first British proposals for setting up air training schools on its territory. Prime Minister King did not want Canada to get involved in the war by supplying pilots. In addition, he was concerned that the interference of imperial armed forces would not allow Canada to develop its own national air force.

But the proclamation of the state of war on September 10th, 1939, changed the situation entirely. The Canadian Parliament, having voted to support Britain’s war effort, had now to decide what form that support would take. Large-scale airmen training on Canadian soil seemed to be a significant contribution, and also one that would keep to a minimum the number of soldiers serving overseas...

As King stated in a radio speech, December 17, 1939:
http://collections.civilisations.ca/warclip/objects/common/webmedia.php?irn=5012659

The United Kingdom Government has since informed us that, considering present and future requirements, it feels that participation in the Air Training Scheme would provide for more effective assistance towards ultimate victory than any other form of military co-operation which Canada can give. At the same time the United Kingdom Government wishes it to be clearly understood that it would welcome no less heartily the presence of Canadian land forces in the theatre of war at the earliest possible moment.

You will recall that, on September the 19th, the Government announced that a division was being organized for service overseas, and, as you are aware, no time is being lost in our endeavour to
meet the wish of the United Kingdom for the early despatch of an Expeditionary Force.

King in effect coerced the Brits into agreeing with the first part of the first paragraph.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Good stuff from Salim Mansur (usual copyright disclaimer):
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Mansur_Salim/2008/02/16/pf-4851684.html

The debate over Canada's role in Afghanistan is the type in which democracies engage, and Canadian soldiers on a mission in harm's way need to know they have the government, Parliament and the people of Canada behind them.

This debate, however, will be heard beyond Canada and it will indicate, despite spin doctoring, that a parliamentary majority is lacking for Ottawa to meet its obligation to the UN-mandated and NATO-led mission to support the Afghan people and the elected government in Kabul.

It will send a message that Canadians are unwilling to see their soldiers engaged in combat missions, and that among the NATO members there is insufficient commitment to sending the minimum number of troops requested for deployment alongside Canadian soldiers in the Kandahar region, where the Taliban insurgency remains robust.

And the message will be unmistakable.

It will tell the enemies of the Afghan people -- Taliban insurgents and al Qaida terrorists -- that while the West is not about to cut and run from fighting, it does not have the stomach to stay in the fight for the length of time needed to eliminate them.

This is what Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar have been telling al Qaida and Taliban fighters from their hideouts in the mountainous caves of the Hindu Kush on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

This is also what the Afghan people fear, given their past experience of being abandoned by the West after the former Soviet Union withdrew its communist army of occupation in 1989. At stake are the hard-won gains made since 2002 by a society liberated from the cruel grips of savage fighters and foreign terrorists.

But there will be others -- Iranian clerics, Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, Syrian and North Korean dictators, Chinese leaders and African tyrants who have made wastelands of their countries -- hearing the message that the West, except for the United States, is reluctant militarily to secure interests beyond its immediate frontier.

The debate in Ottawa and in the European capitals is revealing about where the world's richest democracies stand in confronting Islamists -- the contemporary enemies of freedom and democracy -- and those who might well be the future enemies in a century that is barely a decade old.

Canada is a member of the original G-7 and a founding member of NATO together with Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

The economy of these allies taken together exceeds $12 trillion. Their combined population is close to 300 million.

Yet the message over the Afghan mission is that these rich democracies are reluctant to send soldiers into combat against an enemy possessing neither an economy nor holding territory -- an enemy that is more or less a pack of medieval-minded brigands. Also an enemy that can well be eliminated with the required resolve, as the American soldiers have succeeded in doing in Iraq...

Quite.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[a_majoor]

The political Left will unleash the dogs of war:

http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/02/when-tyrants-tremble-in-their-fear-and.html

When Tyrants Tremble In Their Fear, And Hear Their Death Knell Ringing. . .
. . .and friends rejoice from far and near, how can I keep from singing?

That old anti-slavery hymn rings especially clear today, the day after Valentine's Day, a day when people think about their sweethearts and friends, the 18th anniversary of the day the Khomeinist regime, by fatwa, condemned Salman Rushdie to death. Yet Salman lives.

Among the friends I was thinking about was Lauryn Oates, my co-founder at the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, who just returned to Kabul on assignment with Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. She arrived there just a few hours ago.

Today, another friend, Solidarity Committee member and Vancouver columnist Ian King, has an interview with Lauryn in the metro daily 24 Hours, from just before she left. Here's Lauryn on the grotesquely inverted politics of Canada's so-called "anti-war" movement, and its corruption of Canada's New Democratic Party:

"They're pro-war, which goes against everything I think the left should actually stand for. It's a betrayal of leftist values that caused me to abandon that party."

And that is the bracing truth that far too many people of the Canadian "left" have failed to muster the stamina to face: "Troops out" means war. It means the triumph of barbaric misogyny. It means a surrender to slavery.

"It's absolutely guaranteed," says Lauryn. "You'd see civil war, you'd probably see it for years, you'd see mass deaths, much worse than what what we see now. I couldn't live with that if my country was responsible for letting that happen."

Yesterday, an old friend, Ian's fellow columnist Bill Tieleman, wrote a Valentine's Day column about the eccentric and daring Afghan politician Malalai Joya that reiterates the same delusion that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon recently called a "historic misjudgment" that is "almost more dismaying" than the rank opportunism of the Taliban itself.

Bill is a decent guy who is simply wholly unfamiliar with the issues at stake in Afghanistan. His mistakes begin with his first sentence: "Canada has already lost 78 soldiers and a diplomat in combat in that tragic country, which we simply do not understand."

The first mistake is an honest but outrageous mistake that also skates perilously close to making partisan politics out of dead soldiers: We have not lost 78 soldiers to combat in Afghanistan. Most of those 78 deaths, which have occurred over a six-year period, had nothing at all to do with combat. It is now 2008. Not one Canadian soldier has died from engaging in "combat" since 2006.

The second half that sentence is not so much a mistake as an admission - or at least the suggestion of one - that he simply doesn't understand what his column purports to be about.

Bill might profit by talking to some of the tens of thousands of Afghan Canadians whose views have been strangely ignored in this country. But first, he would have to set aside the habit, peculiar to and widespread among New Democrats, of letting Malalai Joya do his thinking for him. At the very least, he might be a bit more straightforward about what it is that Joya actually thinks.

Ian King, who took the time to understand a bit about Afghanistan before setting out to write about it, knows only too well what Joya thinks: "When asked by 24 hours' Irwin Loy what the result of a Western pullout would be, she replied 'Civil war'."

In prison cell and dungeon vile, our thoughts to them are winging. When friends by shame are undefiled, how can I keep from singing?
One struggle, many fronts.

In Saudi Arabia, a woman named Fawza Fahli spent Valentine's Day in a dungeon, waiting to be executed by beheading, on a conviction for witchcraft based on a written confession that she does not know how to read, and which she signed, by fingerprint, only after 35 days of beatings, during which she had to be hospitalized.

In Montreal, our beloved Simon continues to wage his campaign to force Canadians to confront the ongoing pogrom that gay people are suffering in Jamaica, and Simon sees a glimmering of hope in that struggle in a Canadian refugee-status application filed by Jamaican Gareth Henry, who has seen 13 of his gay friends slaughtered over the past four years.

Meanwhile, my friend the Iranian-Canadian blog-wizard Arash Kamangir and Israeli-Canadian journalist Lisa Goldman explain, in Notes from the Underground, how tens of thousands of Iranians and Israelis have found ways to send one another their warmest regards, and to argue, and discuss, and make friends, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them.

And friends rejoice, from far and near.

 

[observor 69]

I can see lessons for Afghanistan in this article. The bad guys will be around for a long time but the West has a limited patience with mounting casualties and cost.

http://www.gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20The%20Shadow%20of%20Tet.txt


27 January 2008
                                               
The Shadow of Tet
                                                 
By Gwynne Dyer

        Forty years ago this week, the American public realised that the
United States was not going to win the Vietnam war. Lulled by assurances
that "progress" was being made in the fight against the insurgents,
Americans had patiently borne five years of growing military casualties in
Vietnam, but the Tet offensive shattered their illusions. Could the same
thing happen this year in Iraq?


Rest of article at link.

 

[Reccesoldier]

Afghanistan is not Viet Nam, is not Iraq, is not Somalia, is not Algeria, is not the Congo is not...

It's telling that Mr Dwyer fails to mention the single most insidious enemy the US faced in Viet Nam, namely the US media, and unfortunately that is a lesson we can take on board today.

 

[GAP]

An older article (Feb 13), but pointed.....

Not in my worst nightmares ...
LEWIS MACKENZIE
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail February 13, 2008 at 6:20 AM EST
Article Link

Imagine, in a close election, the Liberal Party led by Stéphane Dion regains power with a slim plurality. Within 24 hours, Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier is issued new Rules of Engagement (ROE) for the Canadian Forces serving in Afghanistan. These are immediately passed to the Canadian commander in Kandahar and on to the battle group commander. The Lieutenant-Colonel tells his soldiers the ROE are effective immediately, and adds his comments:

Rule 1. You will no longer attempt to eliminate the insurgency threat to the vast majority of the local population in Kandahar province.

"That will be left to soldiers from other countries yet to be identified. You will redirect your efforts to being nice. Your commander will explain how this will be achieved."

Rule 2. You will provide security for the local population and construction projects but you will not engage in combat to do so.

"If you served in Bosnia, you will know how to do this. If not, others will show you how to place yourself in a dangerously exposed position between the attacker and the people you are protecting. That way, the attackers will have to go through you and you will be allowed to fire at them in self-defence. Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but remember, the people who gave us this order must know something we don't.

Rule 3. There will be no more "search and destroy" missions by Canadians.

"You will note the order says no more search and destroy missions. That being the case, I interpret the order to permit us to conduct "search" missions on even days of the month and "destroy" missions on odd days.

To make this easy to remember in the heat of battle - sorry, I meant while observing the enemy ... darn, I meant our nemesis, the Taliban - you will receive colour-coded ammunition. "Search days" will have blue bullets, with 50 per cent of them being blanks spread randomly in your magazines. Our superiors feel this gives the Taliban a more level field on which to fight.

On "destroy days," there will be red bullets and even though you can only fire them for two hours in any 24-hour period, we will at least have some opportunities to disrupt the Taliban's strategic objective, which is to retake Kandahar city.

Rule 4. Don't count on assistance from tanks and artillery or allied air-to-ground fire if you get into difficulty.

"Those weapon systems are much too warlike and really turn off the NDP who are supporting the new government.

It's going to be hard working around this caveat, but I promise to give it some thought and get back to you.

Rule 5. You are precluded from engaging in aggressive combat operations.

"We are serving as one of 11 national military contingents under NATO. The commander's mission is to defeat the insurgency and expand the secure areas in southern Afghanistan. When he tasks us to assist in such operations, I will be the one to give him the bad news that we don't do things like that any more."

Rule 6. As usual, politics, religion and sex will not be discussed during quiet periods. This rule also applies to these Rules of Engagement."No comment and stop snickering!"

When soldiers put their lives on the line, they expect the political direction they receive to make sense and be achievable.

During the times I reported to the United Nations as a field commander, I was appalled at the incomprehensibility of some of the orders issued from that organization. Never in my wildest nightmares did I believe a political party in my own country could conceive of options equally bizarre.

Training the Afghan army and protecting development and reconstruction operations without the security provided by pro-active military operations by Canadian soldiers significantly increases the risk to life and limb.

Retired Major-General Lewis MacKenzie was the first commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo
More on link

 

[McG]

Manley panel: Don't expect firm deadline for mission
Updated Tue. Mar. 11 2008 6:54 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff

Members of the Manley panel say the government should not expect a firm deadline for the Afghanistan mission, and that an extra 1,000 NATO soldiers in Kandahar should only be seen as a bare minimum for military support.

A crucial vote on the mission is expected Thursday in the House of Commons, and the Liberals have suggested they will likely support a motion to extend military operations until 2011.

But Canadians should not expect an exact date for when the mission might end, panel member Derek Burney told the Foreign Affairs committee Tuesday.

"We spent a lot of time debating this," he said.

"We knew Canadians would have loved to have heard from the panel that, you know, by December 31st in such and such a year our mission will be accomplished. But we found no operational logic that would lead us to a certain time for the completion of the mission."

Burney said the panel saw the mission as being "performance-based, not time-based," leaving it open when troops might complete their objectives of boosting local security forces and helping build infrastructure for local communities.

"We fully expect that the Afghan security forces will be taking the lead responsibility for security, to some extent, in the coming two to three years," he added. "But as for when they will be able to take full charge of security in Kandahar, there's nobody who could give a guarantee about that."

Fellow panel members Pamela Wallin, a former broadcaster; and John Manley, a former Liberal MP who headed the panel at the request of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, also spoke before the committee.

Manley said Canada should expect a bare minimum of 1,000 extra NATO soldiers in Kandahar, if it wants to continue operations in the war-torn country until 2011.

He said the panel arrived at that troop number after speaking with Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff, and Gen. Guy LaRoche, who commanded Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan last fall.

Opposition critics have said NATO needs to double its forces throughout Afghanistan, and adding 1,000 troops to Kandahar will not be enough to help Canadian soldiers.

With files from The Canadian Press

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080311/afghanistan_vote_080311/20080311?hub=TopStories

 

[OldSolduer]

I do beleive that most North Americans thought this was a three or four year solution, and I daresay some thought it would be solved like an hour long mystery.
Insurgencies take an interminably long time to win, if anyone really wins. Look at Norhtern Ireland....well over 30 years.
I seem to recall there are four phases to an insurgency. I don't remember the names but here goes:

1. Propaganda phase - whipping up the publics emotions
2. Civil disobedience - ie sit ins, protests etc
3. Guerilla warfare - attacks on cell towers, planting IEDs etc
4. Open Warfare -

The insurgency can move between phases and don't necessarily have to follow in order....in 06 the Taliban tried the Open Warfare thing, and are still paying for it, as they slipped back into the guerrilla phase...
Afghanistan could take a generation.....its not going to happen in 5 or 6 years, and Iraq will take longer.

 

[McG]

LEARNING FROM THE SEVEN SOVIET WARS: LESSONS FOR CANADA IN AFGHANISTAN

 

[OldSolduer]

MCG this link looks good.I'm particularly impressedwith the SWORD model, as it makes complete sense.
Just as the individual can learn from the mistakes of others, armies can learn from the mistakes of other armies.
If you ask me, we should start teaching this material to our junior leaders NOW. They aboslutely NEED to KNOW this if we are to succeed with the "Full Spectrum Ops" vision....if that's what it's still called. Junior leaders must not only be tactically aware, but strategically aware as well.
Thank you for directing me to this link.

 

[a_majoor]

We need to be doing a better job at home as well.......

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=469477

Home-grown 'champion of Islam'

Stewart Bell,  National Post  Published: Friday, April 25, 2008

Canwest News Service

TORONTO -Naeem Muhammad Khan wants everyone to "Support Our Troops," but he's not talking about the Canadian Forces in Kandahar.

From his apartment in Toronto, Mr. Khan has been posting messages on the Internet calling Osama bin Laden a "hero" and "champion of Islam."

The 23-year-old fundamentalist's online logo combines the black Taliban flag and the outline of an AK-47 above the "Support Our Troops" slogan.

Between sips of iced coffee at Tim Hortons, Mr. Khan explained that he is a supporter of the Taliban, as well as other armed Islamic groups.

" 'Support our Troops' means supporting the mujahideen [Muslim soldiers of God] who are fighting for their freedom and rights against illegal occupation in many, many places over the world like Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine and Somalia," he said later in an e-mail.

Views like these are becoming increasingly common in Western countries, Canada included, and they are worrying to governments concerned about radicalism and violence.

Mr. Khan is an Islamist, not a terrorist, but what most disturbs moderate Muslims are his harsh comments about those who do not subscribe to fundamentalist beliefs.

In his online postings, Mr. Khan calls Tarek Fatah, Irshad Manji and other moderates "apostates," and says that under Islamic law, the punishment for apostasy is death. The same goes for those who insult Islam.

"Behead her!!! And make a nice video and post it on YouTube," he writes about one "Islam basher." As for "Jews who support Zionism and Israel … since they are killing Palestinians … killing them is not bad … they deserve to die."

Elsewhere he writes, "Those who hate Islam and want to destroy is [sic] will have their fates decided by the swords of Muslims Inshallah [God willing]."

Mr. Khan said he was angry when he wrote these and did not mean anyone harm. He said he meant that those killing Palestinians deserve to die and that under Shariah law, the sentence for apostasy and insulting Islam is death.

But Mr. Fatah and other moderates say such expressions go too far, and are becoming all too common in Canada.

"In recent times, hundreds of Islamic radicals have settled in Canada," said Tahir Gora, a Pakistan-born writer who has been tackling the issue in his Hamilton Spectator columns.

"They are spreading hatred and extremism in the guise of freedom of expression. On the other hand, they put death penalties to those dissidents who challenge the traditional medieval way of Islam."

Mr. Gora heads the Canada Safety Think Tank, which monitors what he calls the growing Islamist radicalization in the country.

He wants Ottawa to take the issue more seriously and believes police should lay hate-crimes charges against extremists who pronounce death sentences on moderates like himself.

The government says it is trying to tackle the problem. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service's latest annual report listed radicalization as a top priority.

Terrorism cases before the courts in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa all concern allegations of violent plots motivated by Islamist extremism. And the RCMP said in January it was investigating a Bangladeshi-Canadian for what Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day called "extremist rantings" that were "encouraging jihad and extolling the virtues of killing our Canadian soldiers."

Raised in a secular family in Karachi, Mr. Khan said he became a follower of the controversial Pakistani cleric Israr Ahmad and adopted his conservative Deobandi stream of Sunni Islam.

After graduating from Greenwich University in Karachi with a degree in business administration, Mr. Khan immigrated to Canada with his parents in 2006.

He is unemployed but said he hopes to complete an MBA.

He said in Canada he can openly preach views for which he would be jailed or tortured in Muslim countries. "And believe it or not, me and many Muslims like me are willing to migrate ASAP to an Islamic state as soon as it emerges," he said.

Intelligence expert Professor Wesley Wark said Mr. Khan's "odious" views raised the question of whether Canada needed to specifically outlaw the incitement of terrorism.

"There is sometimes a value in exposing views such as those of Mr. Khan in public, where ridicule can scrub them away," said Prof. Wark, a visiting research professor at the University of Ottawa.

sbell@nationalpost.com

Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

Since he seems keen to "migrate ASAP to an Islamic state as soon as it emerges", perhaps we can arrange for him and his friends to be transported post hast to the North West Frontier region of Pakistan. He may discover that they are a bit short on Internet, running water and heated accommodations in the winter, but this is what he says he wants, right?

 

[TylerSnap!]

This guy's a douche.  There is nothing wrong with Islam but when dinks like this guy get all swept up in the fundamentalist extremism they only encourage racism and ignorance.  Note the fact that he is unemployed.  Most unstable people out there usually become the most vocal and extreme when they have to much time on their hands.  Like Hitler.

 

[MarkOttawa]

This is an article worth reading:

The honest anti-war position: Support
New B.C. group aims to laud, not decry, Afghan mission
National Post, April 26
http://www.nationalpost.com/related/links/story.html?id=472578

VANCOUVER -The rabble will gather again today, outside this city's main public art gallery on a large, downtown square, near clothing shops and record stores. A good spot for an anti-war protest.

As they always do, leaders of the group Mobilization Against War and Occupation
http://www.mawovancouver.org/
will distribute propaganda-filled leaflets. MAWO's message: Canadian soldiers deployed in Afghanistan are criminals, "battling a popular resistance movement of regular Afghan people."

The recent decision in Parliament to extend Canada's mission in Afghanistan "means two more years of plunder, two more years of destruction … we must demand an end to this cruel war drive," reads MAWO's latest pamphlet.

A poorly formed view, but not uncommon. Similar sentiments are expressed throughout the country. But a new countermovement has formed, one that lauds the Canadian Forces and its efforts in Afghanistan. Strange as it might seem, it's based here in Vancouver, where the political landscape tilts sharply to the left.

Founders of the Canada Afghanistan Solidarity Committee
http://afghanistan-canada-solidarity.org/
include poets, environmentalists and local authors who will never be mistaken for conservatives, such as Terry Glavin and Stan Persky. Among the many books Mr. Pesky has written is Boyopolis: Sex and Politics in Gay Eastern Europe; one can assume it is not on Rick Hillier's bedside table.

Other founding members include "academics, gay rights activists, student activists, Afghan-Canadians and feminists," according to a recent CASC press release. "We are united under the premise that we must honour our obligations to the cause of solidarity with the people of Afghanistan … The only honest 'anti-war' position is to support Canada's military engagement in Afghanistan."

Not such an easy sell, admits CASC member Jonathon Narvey, a 33-year-old journalist and editor. "A lot of our members are lefties," he says, but "it's a bit of a grind" getting across the message that the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting. Much of the effort is used "reminding people of the facts."

The committee takes direct aim at MAWO, warning students and activists to steer clear of it, and describing it as "a bizarre cult-like group" whose demands for an immediate withdrawal of military from Afghanistan are "simplistic, ignorant and morally disgraceful."

Human-rights consultant and CASC founding member Lauryn Oates, 26, does not apologize for the strong language and condemnations; she says they are necessary and long overdue. MAWO, she says, "is despicable."..

MAWO members deny their organization resembles anything like a cult. "I am familiar with this kind of slander and gossip campaign," said Kira Koshelanyk in an interview this week. "This kind of thing, honestly, we don't pay a lot of heed to that."

But when it comes to Afghanistan, MAWO members do not speak from any direct experience. "We obviously have not been to Afghanistan," admitted Ms. Koshelanyk, in an interview this week. "Of course, we have met [Afghans who share MAWO's point of view]."

Unfortunately, she could not name any. Fellow MAWO member Janine Solanki jumped in to explain that Afghans living in Canada "don't feel comfortable getting involved because the country they are living in is occupying Afghanistan. As immigrants, it's a difficult thing in Canada to speak out against that."

Nonsense, says Afghan-Canadian Karim Qayumi, a CASC member and the director of research at the University of British Columbia's divisions of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery.

"I know many Afghans who are passionate about the military mission in Afghanistan but they are still critical of it," Dr. Qayumi said. "I am critical, but I support it, because I know that a withdrawal would lead to chaos. Civil war."

Dr. Qayumi, 57, has an informed perspective. A year after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he joined the mujahedeen resistance; for three years, he treated wounded fighters in the Afghan countryside. He was targeted for assassination by pro-Soviet collaborators. Dr. Qayumi immigrated to Canada with his family in 1983 but returns to Afghanistan on a regular basis, to distribute medical supplies and to perform charity work.

"I am totally amazed by Canadians and their efforts to help in Afghanistan," he says. "Unfortunately, I have also encountered Canadians who do not understand the problems there."

Successive federal governments have failed to articulate clearly the mission's purpose, he adds. Meanwhile, some elements on the political left "have their own political motives for spreading what is obviously false information about Afghanistan," Dr. Qayumi said. "They say there are promoting peace, but what they advocate will lead to more war." Better than most of us, he knows that extremists cannot go unchallenged...

Disclosure: I'm a founding member of the CASC.  More on Terry Glavin's blog:

An Afghan appeal: "I would like to thank you. . . do not abandon us. Don't forget us."
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/02/afghan-appeal-i-would-like-to-thank-you.html

Inside the cult that runs the "Mobilization Against War and Occupation"
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/02/inside-cult-that-runs-mobilization.html

Inside The Cult That Runs The "Mobilization Against War and Occupation": Part II (Check the photo.)
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/02/inside-cult-that-runs-mobilization_07.html

When Tyrants Tremble In Their Fear, And Hear Their Death Knell Ringing. . .
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/02/when-tyrants-tremble-in-their-fear-and.html

Forget the Silly "Anti-War" Parades. Put The Afghan People First.
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/03/forget-silly-anti-war-parades-put.html

Afghanistan: Do We Stay or Do We Go?
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/04/afghanistan-do-we-stay-or-do-we-go.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

The strange contrasts of soldiering. A slide-show set to the song, by Paul of Celestial Junk:

If I Ever Leave this World
A Tribute
http://cjunk.blogspot.com/2008/04/if-i-ever-leave-this-world.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

A post at The Torch:

ISAF: US getting really serious about stronger command role in south
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2008/05/isaf-us-getting-really-serious-about.html

Plus (update):

CDS General Hillier in the Legion Magazine
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2008/05/cds-general-hillier-in-legion-magazine.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[McG]

Rae disagrees with Dion on Afghanistan
Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, May 20

OTTAWA - Despite past rhetoric to the contrary by his own party leader, Liberal International Affairs critic Bob Rae says Canada never had an option to "cut and run" from Afghanistan.

Rae offered that assessment in a recent speech to a gathering of international diplomats in Ottawa, in which he presented his views on Canada's foreign policy.

Though Rae had harsh words for how the Conservative government has handled relations with China, and for the continuing funding shortfall to Canada's diplomatic corps at Foreign Affairs, he struck a non-partisan tone on Afghanistan.

Barely two months on Parliament Hill, Rae's remarks underscored how he has attempted to rise above the partisan political rancour and set a statesmanlike tone for his new job as the official Opposition's shadow foreign minister.

"The real question is, we can't actually leave. We made a commitment until 2011. We signed the Afghan Compact. We're members of the NATO alliance. It's not simply open for us to say . . . that we're going simply to cut and run," Rae told the symposium, sponsored by Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, and held Friday at the Ottawa residence of the Austrian ambassador.

Rae's remarks also highlighted the differences within the Liberal party over the Afghanistan mission. Liberal Leader Stephane Dion had initially wanted Canada to serve notice to NATO that it would withdraw its 2,500 troops from Kandahar by February 2009.

But after a bipartisan effort from Liberals and Conservatives, the two parties agreed on a motion in mid-March that has now extended the mission to 2011.

Rae, who came third to Dion for the party leadership in late 2006, was elected to the House of Commons in March in a byelection, days after the Afghanistan vote.

Senior members of both parties privately admit that a core group of Liberals understood that Dion had to be persuaded to accept the fact he could not simply withdraw Canadian troops from a NATO mission without risking the country's international reputation.

Several prominent Conservatives have singled out Rae as a voice of reason within the Liberal party on international affairs, in particular, finding the consensus to extend the Afghan deployment.

Rae's speech was not openly critical of Dion. However, his language on Afghanistan mirrored what Harper himself said on his first trip there in March 2006: that as long as he was prime minister, Canada would never "cut and run" from Afghanistan.

Rae said he never would have believed that a consensus on Afghanistan would have been possible. He said the report by the independent panel headed by former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley went a long way toward bridging the political divide on Canada's controversial mission to Afghanistan.

"Mr. Manley's report helped Canadians see that the so-called choice between staying and going was not really the choice," Rae said.

"What Mr. Manley did was start to say there are a lot of things that are of concern to us in Afghanistan, and we're going to have to do a better job, change the mission, and change the direction," Rae said.

"It wasn't a matter of one party or the other swallowing the position of the other party. It was a matter more and more of Parliament simply getting its act together."

Rae's attempts at bipartisanship have earned him accolades across the floor of the House of Commons. He has been lauded by no less than Environment Minister John Baird, one of the government's fiercest political attackers, for not initially asking questions about whether the ex-girlfriend of Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, who was romantically linked in the 1990s to Quebec motorcycle gang members, had created a security risk for the government. However, Rae has called for Bernier's resignation, accusing him of being out of his depth on international issues, particularly Afghanistan.

"Rae is classy. He has some dignity to his office and there is a reason why the minister's own critic wouldn't ask that type of sleazy question," Baird said.

But that goodwill didn't last long. On Friday, Rae raised the issue, saying: "I have been asking for some time now in, I think, a very civil way, whether the government would not think it wise to conduct a security review with respect to the conduct of the Minister of Foreign Affairs."

Government House leader Peter Van Loan told Rae he should "stop insulting people."

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=e1290549-b973-470d-9783-880f3c139229

 

[zipperhead_cop]

It would appear that the Leafs just won the Stanley Cup playing on the newly frozen rink in Hell.