What happened to the Canada I knew / where did it go? White poppies,the NDP,political correctness,lowering the flag,wtf is going on!

Peace loving we are but we are also a paradox in that we produce the worlds most capable fighting man.So lets hug a Taliban to day and it`ll all go away.Damn! that might make a good country song.

You’re wrong on both counts.

Their entire military is only about 64K regular and about 28K reserves. Do you honestly suggest that Canada sends 1/3 of it’s military(including reserves…) to Afghanistan?

Maybe you guys SHOULD start paying more attention, and take back responsibility for YOUR war.

As a Canadian, I don’t think Canada should be engaging in warfare, especially someone else’s war. But we’re already more than half in and we can’t stop now. The only way for us to pull out is if you Americans go back in.

At least it’s a common misapprehension.

We haven’t left. There are more of us here now than there ever have been. At no time have our numbers here fallen.

The difference is that instead of NATO and the US running parallel security missions, now NATO is in charge of the security mission.

The actual goal here would be a break down of NATO countries some time next year with the Canadians pulling out based on that problem. Bangladesh got the development money and it’s seen as Canada ‘writing off’ Afghanistan by allowing a third party to distrbute the funding, which is on trouble because the schools are seperated by gender and there was a coup in Bangladesh right after the funds were promised.

So, the plan of a NATO breakdown and withdrawl of Canadian forces is really only important if the insurgency gets worse, something that they plan on-but the real answer is to contribute more Canadian forcers to say, for example; 20 to 30,000.

That means having a functional government, a functional educational system, a functional infrastructure and a viable middle class.

None of which is going to spring, fully formed, even from teh head of Zeus.

It also means actually putting the Afghan government in charge of the country. Right now the government of Afghanistan has no control over the tens of thousands of foreign military troops in the country. This is an occupied country,

Simply, totally, false.

You don’t see the stories about the new wells, new schools, new tractors, district centers. The “journalists” aren’t talking about the changes from one month to the next, one year to the next; the crowds of children going ot and from school every day where there were none. The refugees returning to previously vacant land. You hear abouthte crops of poppies and marijuana, but not the huge crops of wheat, barley, vegetables, and fruit. You get treated to a daily running bodycount, but you do not get told what those lives bought.

The stories are all about the price and nothing about the value.

http://blip.tv/file/97012

If the Taliban or the Iraq insurgents offer up propaganda, that gets published, but any hint of “spin” on our part is a vice somehow.

I’m not one of these that will claim that the media is biased, or rather, not politically biased. What they are is anti-establishment. Government, regardless of party, is bad, and the crusading journalists are going to expose the truth and show you all how you’ve been deceived. As such we can do no good and presenting such would expose a pro-American bais which they must guard against. It’s a theory anyway.

The simple fact is that no one can declare this effort a failure. Churchill once made a comment about the end of the beginning and such applies here as well. Did we hope to get away without having ot supply a generational effort? Of course. It was a possibility. Turns out not to have come to pass. That’s not a failure, just a reality.

You should have seen this place in 2003. It’s not even the same place today. Kandahar has electricity. Since Operation Medusa there is a night life too. That’s huge. Returning refugees is a clear measure of the conquoring of fear and so is the family in Kandahar that will sit outside on a fall night to watch television.

But you’re going to have to come see for yourself, or take my word for it, because you’ll never see it on even FOX News.

An indigenous insurgency has never been put down by military force that is not draconian in nature. The Russians could not do it here and they were much more willing to suffer causalities and to trample over human rights than any western democracy ever will be.

The way to defeat an indigenous insurgency is not by military force but by removing the factors that make people support the insurgency.

That means having a functional government, a functional educational system, a functional infrastructure and a viable middle class. Getting this to the Afghan people means some true aid and not just the phantom aid that is practiced. (Much of the money being spent in the donor country, huge mark-ups for agencies and NGO’s who simply pas the work on to a sub contractor who re-sub contracts for the work after taking as much as 50% in overhead etc.)

It also means actually putting the Afghan government in charge of the country. Right now the government of Afghanistan has no control over the tens of thousands of foreign military troops in the country. This is an occupied country,

Give the people something to live for and they will not be as willing to throw away their lives for nothing.

But how do you think we’re going to go about that?

As a Canadian, I don’t think Canada should be engaging in warfare, especially someone else’s war. But we’re already more than half in and we can’t stop now. The only way for us to pull out is if you Americans go back in.