CAN Opp'n Reportedly "Keen to Debate" AFG, Military Buys

[The Bread Guy]

NDP def critic says she's going to push for CF troops to get outta dodge BY 2009 - this, and other tidbits you might enjoy, shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the Copyright Act.

War of the Words
Opposition parties are keen to debate Afghanistan and military purchases
CanWest News Service, via Ottawa Citizen, 28 Jan 07
Article Link

News about Afghanistan may no longer be front page or top of newscasts, but opposition politicians will make debate about the mission front and centre when Parliament returns.

MPs on both sides of the Commons are preparing for a political fight and positioning themselves in the public-relations battle.

In an attempt to boost support for Canada's Afghanistan mission, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has been out giving speeches that highlight the role Canadian soldiers are playing in road building, the construction of schools and improving health care for Afghans.

The situation in Kandahar province, a hotbed of Taliban resistance and the area that has claimed 37 Canadian lives during the past year, is much better than it was seven months ago, he argues.

At a symposium in Edmonton, O'Connor linked Canada's involvement in Afghanistan to terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. "When the Taliban or al-Qaeda came out of Afghanistan, they attacked the Twin Towers and in those Twin Towers, 25 Canadians were killed. The previous government and this government will not allow Canadians to be killed without retribution."

Earlier in the month at a business lunch in Halifax, O'Connor told a crowd that public support for the mission had stabilized.

The latest opinion survey conducted Jan. 8 to 10 for CanWest News Service showed support for the mission had risen slightly, with 58 per cent in favour, compared to 38 per cent opposed.

But military officers readily acknowledge public backing for the Afghan operation is soft.

Dawn Black, the NDP defence critic, said although the Liberals initiated the mission, the public now associates it with Stephen Harper's government. That, she says, could mean unwanted political baggage for the Conservatives during the next election campaign. "Canadians want to support the men and women in the military," said Black. "But what they're conflicted about is whether or not what we're doing in Afghanistan is the right action to take."

The Liberals, the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP have all talked about putting more focus on aid and development in Afghanistan. Conservatives, as well as defence analysts, counter that is difficult because of the lack of security in that country.

When Parliament resumes, Black says the NDP will recommend the Commons Defence committee start hearings into plans for an eventual troop withdrawal. She noted Harper has committed to ending the mission in 2009, so withdrawal would start around September 2008.

The NDP has said it will make the troop pullout one of its priorities.

The Liberals again intend to raise questions about why the government hasn't focused more on development and diplomacy in Afghanistan. The party's new defence critic, Denis Coderre, is questioning whether O'Connor is clear on why Canada is in Afghanistan, pointing to the minister's suggestion that the mission was about retribution.

"Revenge is a Canadian value now?" Coderre asked. "The army is not there to seek revenge. They are there as a stability tool to make development happen."

But O'Connor's communications director, Isabelle Bouchard, said she expects little more than political theatrics on the issue from the opposition ranks. "It's always the same thing," she said. "We can listen to the tapes from last year and they'll be saying the same thing, asking the same questions.

But Afghanistan will not be the only defence issue on the agenda. Bouchard expects the opposition to focus on equipment procurement, a strategy the Bloc Quebecois, the Liberals and NDP acknowledge they are more than happy to embrace.

The Conservative government has approved $17-billion worth of new military equipment projects, including the purchase of transport aircraft, helicopters, ships and trucks.

The Bloc, NDP and Liberals have raised questions about the aircraft deals, in particular. Some critics in the aerospace industry claim the contracts are being directed to specific companies with no real competition.

Back in his opposition days, O'Connor labelled a plan to buy similar aircraft "outrageous" and an attempt to spend billions without public scrutiny. The plan was derailed in the fall of 2005 by bureaucrats and some Liberal cabinet members who were concerned about the non-competitive nature of the contracts. Now in government, O'Connor and his supporters say the purchases and contracts are fair, open, transparent and meet the needs of the Canadian Forces.

The politics of the situation will be also fuelled by defence committee hearings on procurement that are likely to start in March.

"The government talks a good line about accountability," notes Black, "but there's been no oversight on these purchases."

Coderre also says there are specific questions to be asked about each purchase. "We need some answers. We need to have the proof that it is only one company that can provide the equipment."


Worth Watching: We asked blogging pundits and political junkies what -- beyond the environment -- will drive the House in the days to come

Paula Todd
Host of TVO's Person 2 Person

What won't we see? A Conservatives-only plan for governing. Instead, Harper's strategy will continue to evolve as a poll-driven hybrid of policies plucked, in part, from the other parties, as we just saw with Stephane Dion's green theme.

As Mr. Harper works to neutralize the environment as the wedge issue, he'll also want to change the "topic" of the next election, and the budget will be the place to do it. Look for tax cuts, incentives (including environmental and corporate) and lots of protections for families, including an RSP-type plan for the disabled. The Conservatives will aim for hard-to-defeat tax measures that double as their re-election platform, daring the opposition to vote against tax cuts and kids.


Dan Arnold
Alberta Liberal and blogger
calgarygrit.blogspot.com

After making news for all the wrong reasons as Environment Minister, Rona Ambrose could be in the spotlight this spring as Harper's third Intergovernmental Affairs Minister.

With a new equalization formula in the works, talk of preferential treatment for some provinces in a Boeing contract and Harper's pledge to fix the "fiscal imbalance" all coming to a head, there's sure to be a lot of bickering between the provinces and Ottawa.

Toss in a high-stakes Quebec election and it becomes clear national unity and provincial relations will be the big issue of the spring session.

Susan Riley
Citizen columnist
The environment.

After the environment, it will be the environment. There will be skirmishes, one-day-wonder dustups over how to cut taxes for deserving Canadians -- income splitting or more GST relief, or both, or neither? There will be repetitious exchanges over Afghanistan: everyone wants to change course, no one knows how. But the environment is so big and sprawling (as an issue) that it will dominate: tough caps on industry, curtailing auto exhaust, nuclear or not, to Kyoto or not-to-Kyoto? There's tons (tonnes) to fight over.

Darryl Raymaker
Calgarian, longtime Liberal activist, lawyer and blogger
http://darrylraymaker.blogspot.com/

Watch for National Defence. Minister O'Connor, by reason of his apparent Dr. Strangelove zeal for blood, is an easy mark. The opposition will be all over him.

Bush's pal Steve Harper will be trying to deflect attacks every day in the Commons because of his over-cordial relationship with the Churchill wannabe dunce from the White House. He will also be constantly reminded of his chest-beating initial vigour supporting the war in Iraq and his shameless extension of the Canadian commitment to the doomed NATO initiative in Afghanistan. Then there is the matter of billions of dollars worth of untendered defence contracts that O'Connor is going to have to defend.

Jason Cherniak
Liberal and blogger at http://jasoncherniak.com

I suspect that during the next session, the Liberals will return to a focus on child care and the Conservative decision to cut funding for the 10 provincial agreements negotiated and implemented by Ken Dryden and the Martin government. This overall decrease in funding to the provinces will be highlighted by Liberals as evidence that the Conservative claim to have fixed the so-called "fiscal imbalance" is nothing but hot air. Meanwhile, it will highlight the social justice pillar of the Dion Liberal platform.

Adam Daifallah
Author, journalist, and Conservative blogger at http://www.daifallah.com/blog.htm

Barring a flare-up in Afghanistan and more Canadian casualties there, the next biggest issue after the environment will probably be the budget. It's make it-or-break-it time for this Parliament.

If the budget is defeated, we'll be in an election in April. The Liberals keep teetering back and forth, but now look likely to oppose it. That puts the ball in Jack Layton's court. Does he want to prop up the Tories or go into an election, risking losing votes to the Greens and also to the Liberals, when Canadians who want to stop Harper switch their vote?

Ken Rockburn
Host of Talk Politics on CPAC

It's a mug's game to try and guess a single issue beyond the environment that will stay in the spotlight for more than one Question Period. Jim Flaherty's budget will keep things hopping for a few days, as budgets always do.

Afghanistan will continue to provide the background noise in the Commons. It's an issue that the Opposition will keep hammering at right up to an election (which will only happen in the fall, if then).

The truly fascinating scenario will be watching how Jack Layton walks the tightrope between angering the public by forcing an election and angering his political base by propping up the government. All the while the Greens are nipping at his heels and the Dion Liberals are stealing his thunder. He will have to develop an alter ego, the side-show contortionist "Jack the Pretzel."

Erin Sikora
NDP blogger in Victoria
dipperchick.blogspot.com

There is no doubt the environment will carry the day in the upcoming session. But while Harper is busy trying to inoculate himself against attacks on his government's handling of the environment, the opposition parties would be smart to call attention to the inherent unfairness of almost all of the government's other policies.

While banks, corporations and the wealthy keep getting richer, ordinary Canadian families are getting squeezed. Mortgages are getting bigger, student debt is growing and personal debt is at an all-time high, while big Canadian banks are bringing in record profits.

As Canadians start to realize the GST cut isn't giving them much and the $100 for child care a month doesn't help them find a child-care space that doesn't exist, the opposition would be wise to ask "Who benefits from Canada's New Government? Who wins and who loses?"

 

[ArmyRick]

Right. Whatever.  :  :

 

[Brad Sallows]

Debate, or posture?  I have my doubts.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Posture, campaign, poh-TAY-toe, puh-TAH-toe....

 

[youravatar]

poh-TAY-toe, puh-TAH-toe....

Are we making fries?

The only party really pushing for debate on afgahnistan is the NDP. Taliban Jack has not let this thing go. The procurment may have seemed one sided but they were in the best interest of the forces.

The conservatives, (on the surface) appear to be trying to make headway on the enviroment with new enviroment minister John Baird. I hope to see more from him soon. Steve is doing quite a good job thus far (barring i get put on a wait list for some surgery ) And as for an election?

Well only time will tell.

Cheers.

 

[observor 69]

More food for thought :
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We've lost sight of the mission's purpose
TheStar.com - News - We've lost sight of the mission's purpose
Driving out terrorists and rebuilding the country were the reasons Canada first went to war in Afghanistan, but things have changed and Canada is now committed to a fight it doesn't really understand, says James Travers

February 03, 2007
James Travers
National Affairs Columnist


Ottawa–There's a lot of loud talk here about more than doubling defence spending over the next couple of decades. Stephen Harper should listen carefully and shop cautiously.

Why? Because wars aren't what they once were and fighting them now requires different thinking, different equipment and different definitions of success. And because the political price of failure – the price that U.S. President George W. Bush paid in recent elections – is rising so steeply that even countries with militaries as modest as Canada's need to think hard about when and how they apply force.

For all its horrors and sacrifice, war used to be relatively simple. Motivated by self-defence or self-interest, nations of similar strength and technological advancement would settle differences on the 20th century's industrialized battlefields.

The here and now of Afghanistan, Iraq and dozens of lower-profile conflicts make those titanic struggles as much a relic of the past as the rotary telephone. War, as distinguished British general Sir Rupert Smith claims, has moved from the war zones and to among the people.

If he's correct – and conflicts since Vietnam support Smith's case – then that changes almost everything. It changes the capabilities and structures armies will need, as well as what governments can realistically expect their forces to achieve. Most of all, it demands new rigour in everything from strategy and policy development to public discourse about war.

Afghanistan provides worrying evidence of just how far Canada is behind on that learning curve. It's increasingly difficult to ignore that this country, for reasons politicians preferred to obscure, recommitted troops to a conflict it didn't completely understand and still isn't fully prepared to fight successfully.

What's less unsettling and more surprising is that the reasons are obvious. It was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that Canada joined an Afghanistan mission that made sense on many levels. In providing safe haven for Al Qaeda, the Taliban regime became a security threat to Europe as well as North America, and helping the U.S. remove it from power was in Canada's defence and cross-border interests.

That decision only began losing clarity in 2005 when then-prime minister Paul Martin reluctantly agreed to send troops to turbulent Kandahar. Along with aiding Afghanistan, that second commitment took on the extra burden of demonstrating to the U.S. that Canada would stand by its side even if it wouldn't join the Bush administration's Iraq invasion.

Other decisions helped reshape the national perspective. As a critical first step to building the leaner, lighter, more mobile military needed for modern conflicts, Liberals that year named Rick Hillier as Canada's top general, and the chief of the defence staff responded by startling the country with tough talk about killing "scumbags."

Whatever the mission's merits, Canadians began losing sight of its purpose. Was it, as Hillier suggested and Conservative Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor now says, "retribution?" Or was it reconstruction?

The difference is enormous, the answer pivotal. As Smith argues in The Utility of Force, his seminal work on the art of modern war, countries must be brutally frank with themselves about why they are putting their troops and treasury at risk.

Canada has yet to subject itself to that crucible. Instead, successive administrations have set wildly optimistic targets that the current mission, limited by size and commitment, can't hit.

Winning a decisive military victory in Afghanistan is now no more likely than it is that the country's 30-year civil war will end in the miracle birth of a stable, lasting democracy. While politicians continue to hold out hope for both, a tried-and-true formula predicts it won't be so.

Bitter experience and academic analysis demonstrate that security and stability can only be created when minimum troop and economic assistance thresholds are crossed. An Afghanistan coalition that lost much of its momentum when the U.S. shifted attention to Iraq falls short of those standards by at least 50,000 troops and police, as well as by more than $1 billion in annual financial help.

Prospects for Afghanistan would still be bleak even if those higher standards were reached. Geography makes Afghanistan a Rubik's cube of competing interests. What solution to the current conflict could possibly satisfy Pakistan, India, Russia and Iran, let alone Afghanistan's perpetually warring factions and the U. S.?

The obvious response is "none." But the answer is not necessarily to just walk away. Along with failing to deal with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, retreat would abandon some of the world's poorest people.

Holding the current course is no more appealing. There's little reason to expect it will lead to anything other than more of the same by 2009 when Canada's current commitment ends.

While hardly a panacea, the place to start searching for better solutions is in a more candid debate. Instead of continuing to promise what can't or won't be delivered, the Prime Minister should level with Canadians about what can reasonably be achieved in Afghanistan and what it will cost in lives and dollars.

That wouldn't be easy for any minority government and it will be particularly difficult for one that has imported Washington's good-versus-evil rhetoric. Nor would it be easy for opposition parties, particularly Liberals who aren't quite sure where they now stand, to opt for constructive criticism over scoring easy partisan points.

Mounting pressure for higher defence spending only underscores the urgent need for political courage. In the coming budget as well as in the military's long-delayed capital spending plan, the federal government must make defence and security decisions Canada will live or die with for decades.

Nothing has been confirmed, but what has been leaked is worrying. After previously deciding wisely on equipment that would be useful in fighting wars among the people and foolishly on big-ticket items of dubious value, the defence minister is now potentially in the market for everything from tanks to fighter aircraft and Arctic icebreakers.

Some sympathy for the government's purchasing dilemmas comes from an unusual source. Former Liberal defence minister Bill Graham says the unexpected need for some equipment in Afghanistan, notably scrap-heap-ready Leopard tanks, as well as the unpredictable nature of evolving conflicts, make procurement a confusing puzzle.

But it's a puzzle the Harper administration must solve soon. An economy Canada's size can't afford a do-everything military and still adequately fund other pressing national priorities.

That's a critical consideration for the Prime Minister. As EKOS pollster and analyst Frank Graves points out, the strongest support for a bigger military budget and for the Afghanistan mission almost perfectly matches the core Conservative consistency. But other voters, the ones Harper needs to attract if he is to win a majority, are skeptical about both and attach higher priority to the environment, health, education and economic competitiveness.

"There was a sense the military had been allowed to atrophy and had to be repaired," Graves says. "But that's seen as being done and people don't see any tangible benefit for themselves in defence spending."

Still, the toughest decision facing Harper and O'Connor is not between competing national needs. It's in choosing the most appropriate military for a country still on the doorstep of an already troubled millennium.

Anyone who runs a moist finger down the arms shopping list will spot not just options but competing philosophy. Does Canada gamble that not much has really changed and arm itself for guarding sovereignty and territory? Or does it assume the central challenge of at least the next few decades will be protecting people at home by sending the military abroad, a decision that would tilt capabilities toward counter-insurgency, state stabilization and security?

Being Canadian means compromise is always magnetic. But Afghanistan is now a constant reminder that half measures are inadequate when the conflict is complex and far from home.

What's clear to Smith, and should be clear to us, is that war among the people demands a different military, a new suite of development and diplomatic policies, and an honest debate.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Silly rabbit, the reasons for the wars haven’t changed, just the ability to wage them. :