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

[The Bread Guy]

This, from the Associated Press:

Canada will not extend its mission in Afghanistan even if President Barack Obama asks him to when the countries' leaders meet this week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office said Monday.  Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas reiterated in a briefing Monday that Canada will withdraw its troops in 2011 .... "Canada's position is clear," Soudas said. "The military component of the mission ends in 2011."

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s National Post, is a report on the forthcoming Harper/Obama “summit:”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/economy-to-dominate-harpers-meeting-with-obama/article1287784/

Economy to dominate Harper's meeting with Obama
But the elephant in the room will be Afghanistan and the cracks in international resolve to back the mission

Campbell Clark

Ottawa
Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2009

International support for the war in Afghanistan is at a crossroads, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper's aides say he will hold his counsel on the mission's future when he visits Barack Obama at the White House Tuesday.

The economy, the inevitable No. 1 issue for both leaders, will dominate the hour-long meeting. But the elephant in the room will be Afghanistan and the cracks in international resolve to back the mission.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Harper will confine discussion of Afghanistan to a short review of the situation there, according to the PM's spokesman, Dimitri Soudas. And although the U.S. President is in the throes of a domestic debate about whether to commit more troops or seek to exit what some are warning will be his Vietnam, Mr. Harper will save his counsel for Afghanistan's future.

“I'd say that the best forum for that discussion to take place is NATO,” Mr. Soudas said. “The economy, and the clean-energy dialogue, will dominate the discussions. Primarily the economy.”

In Canada, Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, usually one of his party's hawks, broke ranks this week on a bipartisan deal, arguing that Canadian troops should withdraw from combat operations before the scheduled 2011 date or risk a “Vietnam ending.”

Those warnings have reverberated in London, Berlin and Washington, accelerated by fears that the taint of election fraud on Afghan President Hamid Karzai has crippled his legitimacy, and the mission's.

Canada used to argue that other NATO countries had to stiffen their resolve and contribute more to the combat in Afghanistan. As Canadian Forces suffered heavy losses in the country's dangerous south, the U.S. sometimes pointed to Canadian commitment as an example for other allies.

Canada's negotiated political deal to stay until 2011, then withdraw from combat, tempered that zeal, but it remained the nation's foreign-policy priority. Now Mr. Harper is playing down the issue as international commitment grows shakier – hastened by the widespread allegations of electoral fraud against Mr. Karzai.

“It's really thrown the whole premise of the mission off the rails, which was that you stabilize the security situation so that the democratic political process, economic reconstruction and all of that can move forward,” said Fen Hampson, director of Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.

“It's quite clear that nobody, even our own government, really has a clear idea of how you move forward.”

It's hardly surprising that Mr. Harper's PMO does not want to play up discussion of Afghanistan's future, Mr. Hampson said. The war is unpopular, deeply so in Quebec, and election fraud has soured that more. “The support for the two-years-from-now exit option is eroding,” he said.

Mr. Kenny, a vocal figure on security and defence issues, echoed that sentiment in an essay this week. “What we hoped to accomplish in Afghanistan has proved to be impossible,” he wrote.

There have been similar defections in other capitals. British MP Eric Joyce, a former army major, resigned as parliamentary secretary to Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth because his government lacked an exit strategy; in Germany, Angela Merkel's Social Democrat Coalition partners will make troop reductions an election issue. Mr. Obama is facing Democrats in Congress who warn a surge of troops is unpopular with the public.

“We may not be the only ones out in 2011,” said Colin Robertson, a former senior Canadian diplomat in Washington now on leave to research Canada-U.S. relations. “For Obama, that's an election year.”

That political pressure alone is one reason some experts believe Mr. Obama will in fact question Mr. Harper about Afghanistan behind closed doors. The U.S. President will ask Mr. Harper how he neutralized the issue with a 2011 exit date, Mr. Robertson predicted.

“It's Obama turning to Harper and saying, ‘You've got some experience here. … You found the exit ramp. Any advice?' ”

I repeat: the reported electoral fraud is only a lame excuse. Several NATO/ISAF members have poor “democracy” records. The simple fact is that NO Canadian government, neither a Liberal nor a Conservative government, has invested any political capital in “selling” the mission to Canadians. In fact most of the “game” was to try to paint it as “Martin’s war” or “Harper’s war” or, even “Hillier’s war.” The mission was always a political orphan – unloved and unsupported.

Prime Minister Harper did, indeed, find the “exit ramp.” Parliament, representing all Canadians said, “cut and run!”

 

[The Bread Guy]

.... regarding allowing some Afghans who helped Canadians easier access to immigrate to Canada:

Successful applicants will receive health-care coverage under the Interim Federal Health Program as well as resettlement services similar to what is currently offered to government-assisted refugees, including up to 12 months of income support upon arrival in Canada. Applicants may apply under this program until the end of the Canadian combat mission in Kandahar in 2011.

No, this isn't a statement from the mouth of the PM or his spokesperson, but every word of this news release was approved at some point by his team.

 

[MarkOttawa]

So what's ending--the combat mission, the military mission, or the mission at Kandahar?  From Tony at The Torch:

Skill Testing Question on Canada's Afghan Mission
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/09/skill-testing-question-on-canadas.html

Multiple choice question: What is the future of Canada's military presence in Afghanistan?..

Mark
Ottawa

 

[The Bread Guy]

So what's ending--the combat mission, the military mission, or the mission at Kandahar?

The answer?  Yes.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Further to this comment,
http://forums.milnet.ca/forums/threads/49908/post-874636.html#msg874636

a thoughtful post by BruceR at Flit:

Army building: what exactly have we created?
http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2009_09_15.html#006531

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Start of a post at The Torch:

Afstan mission planning--"Gotcha!"?
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/09/afstan-mission-planning-gotcha.html

I've been wondering for some time about the effect the lack of clarity about what exactly the CF may or may not do after 2011 (see end of this post) is having on our military's ability to plan properly. If anything further is contemplated the preliminary planning should be well in train. Now. There's just over two years to go and units, e.g., will need assigning since the (very good) training has become a lengthy process. From BruceR at Flit:..

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

A letter sent to the Globe and Mail but not published:

Lots of US troops already at Kandahar‏

Your editorial "Make this summit about Afghanistan" (Sept. 15)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/editorials/make-this-summit-about-afghanistan/article1287815/
advises Prime Minister Harper to urge President Obama to "support Canadians on the ground in Kandahar" and states that our forces "need support from the Americans".

But Canadians are already receiving very substantial military backing from Americans at Kandahar, which seems to have escaped the editorial's notice. For over a year a U.S. Army battalion has been part of the Canadian Forces' Task Force Kandahar. That battalion actually constitutes about one half the Task Force's ground combat strength. Since this spring a U.S. Army combat aviation brigade has been based at Kandahar Air Field; it is giving our soldiers extensive aerial support (both the battalion and brigade were ordered deployed by former President Bush). And a U.S. Army brigade combat team, deployed by President Obama, has been operational at Kandahar for over a month. That brigade has two battalions in the field in the province.

So there are already three U.S. Army battalions fighting alongside the Canadian Forces. Moreover, there are also substantial elements of two more U.S. Army brigades in the province helping train the Afghan security forces, including a battalion of military police that will work in Kandahar City under Canadian command. All in all the Americans probabaly have at least four times as many forces at Kandahar as we do. Very handsome, and welcome, support indeed.

What the prime minister might in fact usefully do is urge President Obama to send even more troops to the province, something the American military themselves may well suggest. But, seeing as Canada is committed to cease combat in 2011, Mr Harper is in a rather weak position to be a demandeur.

References:
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2008/08/that-us-army-battalion-for-kandahar-has.html
http://www.comfec-cefcom.forces.gc.ca/pa-ap/ops/fs-fr/jtfa-foia-eng.asp#e
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/08/canada-hands-off-part-of-kandahar.html
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/06/us-and-training-afghan-police-in.html
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/09/us-really-taking-lead-in-kandahar-city.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/13/AR2009091302950.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009091302958

Mark
Ottawa

 

[McG]

- Running away from our promise -
Winnipeg Free Press
Editorial
16 Sept 09

ONE doesn't win a war by surrendering. To suggest that Canadian soldiers should pack their bags, pick their boots up off the ground and fly home with their tails between their legs, as Liberal Senator Colin Kenny proposed on Tuesday, amounts to surrendering. It amounts to running away from Canada's promise to the people of Afghanistan that we would spill our blood, that we would sacrifice our lives, so that they could live more freely in their homes and we could live more securely in ours. It amounts to writing off the deaths of 130 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan and the wounding of hundreds more as meaningless events.

Pte. Patrick Lormand, who was killed by a roadside bomb on the same day that Senator Kenny was running up the white flag, would have disagreed with him that the war in Afghanistan is hopeless, that "we are hurtling toward a Vietnam ending." If Canadians such as Senator Kenny have their way, if Canada cuts and runs, then perhaps opponents of the war will get the airlift out of Kandahar and Kabul that they appear to want, the same kind of disgrace that we saw in Saigon in 1975. Perhaps Canada will not leave its Kabul employees weeping on the embassy roof as it did with its Vietnamese employees in Saigon, but that day will also not be one that Canadians will want to remember.

Pte. Lombard's commander in Afghanistan, Brig-Gen. Jonathan Vance, defended his soldier's sacrifice and refuted the senator's "uninformed opinions" in a strongly worded statement: "The thousands of young, clear, determined eyes that remain wide-open here in Kandahar are working hard every day to protect and stabilize the population -- not an impossible mission as some might suggest." Brig.-Gen Vance is exactly right. The death of Pte. Lombard is not a reason to abandon Afghanistan -- it is an argument to stay and finish the job. Hundreds of Canadians and NATO allies should not be left -- dead for nothing -- because people who do not understand how their own lives are at risk in the war on terror don't like the bloody mess of that war.

Senator Kenny, unfortunately, is not the only defeatist Canadian, or even the only defeatist Canadian ally in the Afghan war. Polls indicate an increasing number of Canadians oppose the war, as do an increasing number of Europeans and Americans. On Monday, arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden, architect of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, warned President Barack Obama to draw back: "You are waging a hopeless and losing war," he said while referring to the black American leader as a "house Negro" enslaved to the policies of George W. Bush.

This really wouldn't matter much if so many Canadians and a lot of influential Americans didn't agree with Mr. bin Laden. But they do. Mr. Obama proposes sending thousands more soldiers to Afghanistan to get the job done. Today in Washington he will almost certainly try to persuade Prime Minister Stephen Harper to maintain, even increase, the Canadian military presence in Afghanistan beyond the scheduled withdrawal date of 2011.

Mr, Harper will almost certainly refuse, because the Liberals, the NDP and Bloc Quebecois would not permit him to do that even if wanted to. The critics of the war in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama's left-wing Democrats, Canada's anti-war advocates, are strongly positioned, but if we listen to these defeatists, we will have abandoned the Afghan people, betrayed our war dead and surrendered the war on terror.

 

[OldSolduer]

The more I think of this, the more I think that Communism is winning. They may have torn down the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, but the effects of the Cold War are with us to this day.
There was no talk of cutting and running in WWI, WWII and Korea.

IMO, some people need to grow a spine, and some people should be told "STFU".

 

[McG]

The failing came when Parlaiment voted to exit on an arbitrary point in time as opposed to exit on achievement of concrete measureable milestones. 

 

[MarkOttawa]

Paul at Celestial Junk digs deep, his conclusions:

The Staggering Implications of Losing in Afghanistan
http://cjunk.blogspot.com/2009/09/staggering-implications-of-losing-in.html

...
The implications for our foes are also profound. They can exist comfortably, knowing full well that as long as they don’t cross some magic line ... like bringing down two of the world’s tallest buildings, we will let them be. Our enemies have already figured out that they can become nuclear powers, can kill our soldiers using proxy forces, can meddle in our economies, can meddle in our domestic affairs, can fund political forces within our very borders, can meddle in the affairs of their neighbours, possibly even invade... and we will not lift a finger.

Sadly, the West may once again get its decisive conflict. My son, a serving Canadian soldier in Afghanistan, reminded me recently that we are in Afghanistan partially to avoid just that; a confrontation which will require us to take massive retaliation (think Iran) where Western might is turned against civilians in order to get at the villains. We’ve done it before. How sad, that our pursuit of decadence ( often masquerading as pursuit of health and happiness) just may be the cause of greater loss of life and destruction than anything we could envisage happening in Afghanistan today. It doesn’t take much to imagine the young men and women protesting the Mullah’s in Iran today being incinerated when the West or Israel take revenge for some future beastly crime perpetrated by Iran’s nuclear leadership.

Not only is our Western civilization one that seeks out decisive conflicts and avoids protracted ones, it is also a civilization that has time and again miscalculated and ended up in brutally bloody affairs simply because the price of vigilance was considered too high; and it was more important to live in ease at home, rather than deal with a barbarian while he was still a minor problem and far away on the frontier.

Further Readings...

Osama bin Laden, November, 2001: "...when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse..."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,40750,00.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

The start of a post at The Torch:

The Globeite secret agenda revealed!
http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/09/globeite-secret-agenda-revealed.html

Stop the war! Peace now! Just in case you hadn't noticed...

Follow the links.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente is, pretty much, their resident right winger so when she says we are ”willing to have Canadians blown up for two more years ... because no one [in parliament] wants to broach the subject” it means that even the choir, to which many of us have been preaching, has given up.

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail is a column in which she relies heavily on Janice Gross Stein’s opinion:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-tragedy-of-good-intentions/article1290304/

The tragedy of good intentions
Our model Afghan village shows how to win the battle but lose the war

Margaret Wente

Thursday, Sep. 17, 2009

The village of Deh-e-Bagh is the showcase for Canada's – and NATO's – Afghan counterinsurgency strategy, held up as the model for winning hearts and minds. When tribal elders rejected the Taliban in return for our troops' protection, Canadians set out to improve the village with solar-powered lights, road construction and mosque rejuvenation. When the Taliban attacked a couple of months ago, Canadian-trained Afghan soldiers fought them off.

Chief of Defence Staff General Walt Natynczyk talks to district chief Ahamadullah Nazak in the village of Deh-e-Bagh last week.


The project has been praised by higher-ups, including the secretary-general of NATO. Canada's top soldier, General Walter Natynczyk, says, “If we can move this model along and keep on expanding the footprint in terms of the projects, in terms of the employment, what you're actually doing is providing hope in those regions.” Great strategy. Just one problem: The project only works because our troops are embedded in the village. To replicate it across Afghanistan, even if our troops were welcome, would take more people than the West will ever commit – indefinitely.

Apart from the model village, our soldiers don't get out much. They no longer chase the Taliban. Mostly, they're trapped behind the wire at the base in Kandahar, where IEDs won't get them. There is no technical answer to the roadside bombs, which explode even on what are supposedly the safest roads. Whenever possible, personnel fly by helicopter. Development efforts are increasingly managed from inside the wire – Afghans go in to report, but Canadians don't see for themselves. Outside the model village, they no longer have contact with Afghans.

“Keeping everybody behind the wire keeps your people safe but reduces your effectiveness to zero,” says Janice Gross Stein, director of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. “That's the key challenge we face there.”

If our effectiveness is zero, why are we willing to have Canadians blown up for two more years? Because no one wants to broach the subject. Prime Minister Stephen Harper doesn't want to cause an uproar with our biggest ally, and the Liberals sharply disagree among themselves. Liberal Michael Ignatieff (an advocate of the “soft power” we're supposed to be projecting in Afghanistan) would rather talk about EI reform.

Iraq was the product of neo-con delusions. Afghanistan is in many ways the product of liberal delusions. Both reflect the naive but arrogant belief that outsiders can bring transformational change with good intentions and democracy. But elections hardly matter if a winner's incapable of governing. Afghanistan doesn't need an elected figurehead. It needs a good, tough warlord.

“Haphazard, unplanned interventions of this kind are destructive for everybody,” says Prof. Stein, who speaks for a growing body of realists on both sides of the border. “We have to be a lot more modest.”

Our liberal values won't allow us to discuss the only realistic way to fight this war: to forget about the Taliban and focus on al-Qaeda. That's why we went in the first place. The Taliban are evil, but they have no designs on us. We need to narrow our objectives and get the bad guys using special forces, intelligence, technology and targeted assassinations. But nobody can say that. All hell would break loose.

Our enormous investment in Afghanistan also means we can't invest in places where our efforts might make a difference. As Robert Fowler, the diplomat kidnapped by al-Qaeda, observed to the CBC's Peter Mansbridge, there are places in the world where we can send girls to school without using the military.

In the United States, the debate over salvaging the Afghan mission is out in the open. It pits a growing number of Democrats (and some conservative realists) against senior military leaders, who say more troops for nation-building is the way to go. Up here, we'd rather not discuss it. How many more lives we'll sacrifice between now and 2011 is anybody's guess.

Two points:

1. Despite Mr. Fowler’s very valid point, Afghanistan is worthy of our help. If we have a “responsibility to protect” then, surely, we can and should protect and help the poor, war ravaged Afghans just as much as we can and should protect and help e.g. Africans; and

2. Stein and Wente are right: we need to fight al Qaeda and its sibling groups, not just the Taliban, and special attention needs to be paid to stealing their money and assassinating their members – neither being the sorts of things we want to or even should discuss in public.

We (Australians, Brits, Canadians and Americans) have white collar crime specialists and financial experts who can find al Qaeda’s money and make it disappear from banks in New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Paris, Berlin and Zurich. It would not be exactly a legal operation so it needs to be a very SECRET one. Equally we (same folks) have people who can do targeted assassinations all over the world – close up and quietly or remotely. Killing al Qaeda members, not just leaders, is a good way to slow the movement down. Now, targeted assassinations are also something that might stretch our "public" moral code so that, too, needs to be SECRET. SECRET means just that – managed by a very, very few high level bureaucrats without parliamentary/congressional oversight and without consultation with “experts” like Prof. Stein and, mainly, without the knowledge of the media.

But while we are fighting al Qaeda et al we need to keep on helping and protecting the Afghans so they can secure, rebuild and manage their own country. And, while we are doing that, we had better get ready to protect and help in Africa, too.

The right call, for the all those so called “realists,” is to press the government to:

• Stay in Afghanistan, beyond 2011; and

• Do as it promised – recruit, train and equip tens of thousands of new CF members, above and beyond the 67,000± (regulars) and 35,000± (reserves, many on full time service), and get them ready to fight in places other than Afghanistan.

But the “realists” will not do that because they want the PM and his ministers and Iggy and Bob Rae and the top level bureaucrats to return their calls and invite them to their cocktail parties.

 

[OldSolduer]

ER I concur with your assessment, and what should be done. Unfortunately those who can make the call to have those AQ/Taliban terminated with extreme prejudice won't make that call.
I've read some history on the Brit SOE, the US OSS, and the intial formation of the SAS, US Special Forces etc. Some generals and politicians were (and continue to be) squeamish about utilizing these forces to end the lives of legitimate enemy threats and terrorists.

 

[GAP]

ER...it might get done, but realistically we should never know....

The trouble is the West does not like to be seen as being barbaric animals that murder/assassinate others. The populace is uncomfortable with the idea that if the government et al can do it there, they can do it here.... we have faith they won't, but how would we know if it is secret?

The Israelis have a fearsome reputation of success in this regard, as do a few others, whom we will probably never be able to prove.  It is that fear of success that makes many hesitate before taking on the Israelis and others (eg: Russia with it's swift, brutal retribution history).

 

[Infanteer]

Apart from the model village, our soldiers don't get out much. They no longer chase the Taliban. Mostly, they're trapped behind the wire at the base in Kandahar, where IEDs won't get them. There is no technical answer to the roadside bombs, which explode even on what are supposedly the safest roads. Whenever possible, personnel fly by helicopter. Development efforts are increasingly managed from inside the wire – Afghans go in to report, but Canadians don't see for themselves. Outside the model village, they no longer have contact with Afghans.

I'm curious as to where the author got the hard facts for this statement, as I'm tempted to call it dishonest at best....

 

[The Bread Guy]

We (Australians, Brits, Canadians and Americans) have white collar crime specialists and financial experts who can find al Qaeda’s money and make it disappear from banks in New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Paris, Berlin and Zurich. It would not be exactly a legal operation so it needs to be a very SECRET one. Equally we (same folks) have people who can do targeted assassinations all over the world – close up and quietly or remotely. Killing al Qaeda members, not just leaders, is a good way to slow the movement down. Now, targeted assassinations are also something that might stretch our "public" moral code so that, too, needs to be SECRET. SECRET means just that – managed by a very, very few high level bureaucrats without parliamentary/congressional oversight and without consultation with “experts” like Prof. Stein and, mainly, without the knowledge of the media.

1)  LOVE the idea, and I think there would be public support (even if it is only barely legal).

2)  I like the idea, and could live with it, but it would "stretch our "public" moral code" WAY too far for Canadians to stomach it.

I've read some history on the Brit SOE, the US OSS, and the intial formation of the SAS, US Special Forces etc. Some generals and politicians were (and continue to be) squeamish about utilizing these forces to end the lives of legitimate enemy threats and terrorists.

Methinks it's more a POLITICAL concern (for their bosses more than them) than anything else (see 2 above).

The trouble is the West does not like to be seen as being barbaric animals that murder/assassinate others ....  The Israelis have a fearsome reputation of success in this regard ....

One doesn't want to become like the enemy, but it doesn't have to be this way - I'm still doing research (and would love to hear more from anyone who knows more), but I understand that the Israelis have in the past, or maybe still do, carry out "internal trials" of people that are on "The List" before doing the deed.  These "internal trials" include a defence counsel for the Listee.
Again, I don't see a public appetite for this in Canada.

 

[OldSolduer]

Milnews, Canadians want to bring a freakin terrorist into their midst....sorry "alleged" terrorist. Not only that, we refuse to deport terrorists.
Yeah you could say the Canadian public has no appetite for this. :rage:

 

[The Bread Guy]

Milnews, Canadians want to bring a freakin terrorist into their midst....sorry "alleged" terrorist. Not only that, we refuse to deport terrorists.

With some "rehabilitated" ones aiming to become lawyers here, no less...