Fighting & Winning The Global War on Terror (WW IV)

[a_majoor]

The political battle back home: forward this to all your American friends

http://www.winface.com/?p=21

North Korea, the Democrats, and 40 dead Canadian Soldiers

October 10, 2006 on 9:04 am | In International politics |
If you’re a Canadian who wants to reduce the death rate among soldiers and civilians in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq here’s what you have to do: get Americans to vote Republican.The reason for that is simple: the people behind these conflicts, not the grunts dying on the ground, but the terror masters in Iran and Beijing, watch our public opinion polls and know perfectly well that each death swings more voters to the Democrats and thus makes the world safer for them.

An appeasenik: a Kerry, a Clinton, or a Gore, in power would be a dream come true for these people - enabling them to defeat the growth of American democratic ideas in the two thirds of the world they control, speeding the ground rot happening in Europe, and greatly weakening America at home. Crippling the Bush administration during its last two years isn’t quite as good, but a step in the direction they want to go - so they’re throwing everything they’ve got at killing Americans, at killing Canadians, and Iraqis, and Afghanis because it all plays in the media, and every death swings votes their way.

It has to stop - but only American democrats voting Republican can stop it.

A landslide victory for Republican candidates in November will bring a quick end to the murderous attacks going on now - the people using the Taliban and infesting Iraq won’t throw away their resources for nothing. That will give peace a chance, foster rebuilding, and bring hope to millions. (interpolation: this is a debatable proposition. They may also choose the Sampson option and go down in flames the way Hitler attempted to bring Germany down at the end of the Third Reich)

There’s another side to this too - and if you get a chance to talk to Americans, especially democrats, it’s important to bring this up.

The democratic party has been taken over by extremists, but most democrats are not driven by the hatreds people like Dean exploit. Look at Joe Liebermann, a lifelong democrat driven from the party by a fringe group waving the anti-war banner. Joe, and millions of democrats just like him, is the hope of the party - but those are voices that aren’t being heard. Right now, the Democratic party, the party of dissent, stiffles dissent - and acts to support tyranny and oppression abroad.

To take their party back, democrats have to vote Republican - a landslide victory for Liebermann in Connecticut and Republicans everywhere will create the opportunity for the democratic party to face its demons and throw them out. A re-invigorated American democracy could lead to American elections in 2008 in which neither side promises the terrorists safe haven, in which no appeaseniks take center stage, in which the election becomes a battle of ideas, values, and personalities, not a battle for the future of American democracy in a world at war.

That’s the outcome we need, that’s what the world needs, that what the thousands of real people whose lives will be lost, and the millions whose hopes will be crushed and lives diminished, need. So talk to an American, one on one: get the people you know to understand what’s at stake - and how to stop the killing.

 

[a_majoor]

Some more about the motivations of the Jihadis. This is the long term centre of gravity, and needs to be addressed somehow.

http://www.libertyfilmfestival.com/libertas/?p=2903

Pierre Rehov’s Suicide Killers

“Those who blow themselves up get a good bonus from God. They marry 72 virgins.”

Pierre Rehov’s Suicide Killers is without question one of the most extraordinary films ever submitted to The Liberty Film Festival, and we’re extremely proud to be showing it this year. [Ticket information is here.] I’ve never seen a filmmaker put himself in the kind of life-threatening situations Pierre put himself into in order to make this film - finding his way into terrorist training camps, speaking with terrorists preparing for martyrdom missions, interviewing their families … Suicide Killers is quite simply the most revealing film available about the phenomenon of suicidal Islamic terror. Not only do you get to look into the eyes of suicide killers and hear them explain their behavior (in the most chilling terms imaginable), but you begin to understand the repressive world that creates these men - and now, tragically, women as well. [Several female suicide terrorists are interviewed in the film.]

Suicide Killers is an absolute must-see for anyone who wishes to understand the threat we face in the War on Terror - a threat caused not by American foreign policy, or by Israeli occupation, but by repression in Islamic societies, a great deal of which is sexual repression. This is probably the most intriguing phenomenon uncovered by Pierre’s film. The San Francisco Chronicle recently ran a feature on the film and interviewed Pierre. Here’s some of what Pierre says about his film:

Q: Why did you make this film?

A: I had originally wanted to make a film about the psychology of (Israeli) victims of suicide attacks. I started interviewing victims, but I realized it was going to be a film (of a story that had been told before) — that the victims’ lives were completely torn apart. But something struck me: Everyone told me about the last second before the suicide bomber blew himself up — the look and the smile on his face. I was intrigued about how someone can do something so extreme and have a nice smile on his face. I wanted to discover on the individual level what was hiding behind the smile. This is when I shifted.

In the midst of all this, I talked to one of the girls who survived an attack in Haifa. She was a waitress. She was 17. She saw the taxi stop by the cafe where she was working, she saw a guy come in, going straight to her, and opening his shirt and showing dynamite around his belt. He pointed with his finger toward the dynamite and said, to her, “Do you know what this is?”

I’ve studied psychology, and there are a lot of things connected to flashers — they want to destroy innocence. I realized that these guys in the last minute of their lives have this same behavior. This is when I understood there is something really sexual about this extreme act they want to commit. I knew (about the Islamic religious belief) of 72 virgins, and I also knew about how sexual frustration can lead to people becoming serial killers.

Click on over for the rest of the interview.

This is brave, groundbreaking filmmaking. If the Academy is as ‘courageous’ as it’s always claiming to be, it will nominate Suicide Killers for an Oscar this year.

 

[Bigmac]

    Is Pakistan seeing the light??  ???

Army: Pakistani raid killed up to 80 militants at al-Qaida training centre
HABIBULLAH KHAN



CHINGAI, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistani troops backed by missile-firing helicopters on Monday struck a religious school purportedly being used as an al-Qaida training centre, killing dozens of people in what appeared to be the country's deadliest-ever attack against suspected militants.

The country's top Islamic political leader said American planes were used in the pre-dawn strike against the school - known as a madrassa - and called for nationwide protests Tuesday, claiming all those killed were innocent students and teachers. A U.S. military official denied any involvement in the attack in northwestern Pakistan, near the Afghan border.

An al-Qaida-linked militant who apparently was a primary target of the strike had left the building a half hour beforehand, a Pakistani official said.

Anger over the missile strike scuppered the signing of a peace accord, expected Monday, between tribal elders linked to militants. The United States has urged Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to do more to stop militants from crossing from tribal regions into Afghanistan, where Taliban-fanned violence has reached its deadliest proportions since the American-led invasion in 2001.

Musharraf, along with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, met with President George W. Bush last month in Washington to address the issue.

Helicopter gunships fired four or five missiles into the madrassa in Chingai, said army spokesman Maj.-Gen. Shaukat Sultan. The blasts tore apart the building and all inside, spraying body parts, blood and debris across a wide area.

Sultan said initial estimates indicate the attack killed about 80 suspected militants from Pakistan and other countries. Only three people - all seriously wounded - were believed to have survived, a hospital official said.

"These militants were involved in actions inside Pakistan and probably in Afghanistan," Sultan told The Associated Press.

Sultan said the attack was launched after those in charge of the building refused warnings to close it down.

Among those killed was Liaquat Hussain, a Pakistani cleric and associate of al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, locals and an intelligence official said. Another al-Zawahri deputy, Faqir Mohammed, was believed to have been in the madrassa and left 30 minutes before the strike, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Islamabad, Qazi Hussain Ahmed - an opposition political leader - blamed the U.S. for the attack and said claims that the madrassa was a terrorist training centre were "rubbish." Thirty children were among the dead, he said.

In Afghanistan, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Matt Hackathorn denied the U.S. was involved in the strike.

"It was completely done by the Pakistani military," he told AP.

Mohammed - the al-Qaida deputy who escaped the raid - addressed a crowd of 10,000 mourners at a mass funeral for the victims, criticizing Musharraf's government and promising widescale protests.


"We were peaceful, but the government attacked and killed our innocent people on orders from America," Mohammed told the rally as dozens of militants surrounded him, brandishing semi-automatic weapons.

On Saturday, Mohammed denounced the Pakistani and U.S. governments and praised Osama bin Laden during a rally in the area attended by 5,000 pro-Taliban and al-Qaida tribesmen.

Before burial, the remains of at least 50 people were laid on traditional wooden beds placed side by side in rows and covered with coloured blankets. Locals walked among the beds and offered prayers.

"The government has launched an attack during the night, which is against Islam and the traditions of the area," Siraj ul-Haq, a cabinet minister from the North West Frontier Province, told AP. Ul-Haq said he would resign in protest.

The blast levelled the building, tearing mattresses and scattering Islamic books, including copies of the Qur'an.

In the nearby town of Khar, some 2,000 tribesmen and shopkeepers marched through the main street, chanting "death to Musharraf, death to Bush."

The attack happened about three kilometres from Damadola, another Bajur village where in January a U.S. Predator drone fired a missile that purportedly targeted - and missed - al-Zawahri, killing instead several al-Qaida members and civilians.

Pakistan became a key U.S. ally in its war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and has deployed about 80,000 soldiers in the tribal region to flush out Taliban and al-Qaida militants hiding there.



© The Canadian Press, 2006

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here is another perspective, from one of the charter members of my version of the Anglosphere or, more properly according to Ruxted, the new coalition of capable democracies – see: http://ruxted.ca/index.php?/archives/33-About-Turn!-Time-to-Revise-Canadas-Foreign-Policy-Part-2.html

This is by former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew; it is published in the Jan/Feb 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs and is reproduced here under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101facomment86101/lee-kuan-yew/the-united-states-iraq-and-the-war-on-terror.html

The United States, Iraq, and the War on Terror
By Lee Kuan Yew
From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007

Summary: In spite of its diffculties in Iraq, the United States was not wrong to have removed Saddam Hussein. The outcome of the Iraqi enterprise will be crucial to the course of the "war on terror." And success is still possible -- if Washington takes a page out of its Cold War playbook.

Lee Kuan Yew is Minister Mentor of Singapore. He was Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. This piece was adapted from a speech he delivered when accepting the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service in October 2006.

A Singaporean Perspective

The basic feature of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was inclusiveness -- a willingness to embrace any country that opposed communism, whatever its type of government. The United States contested the Soviet system and held the line militarily, and its consistent and comprehensive approach eventually led to the Soviet Union's implosion.

After the Cold War came the "war on terror." Islamist terrorists tried to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993 and bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Then came the attacks of September 11, 2001. In response, the United States attacked Afghanistan and routed the Taliban. Then, in 2003, the United States invaded Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein and establish democracy there.

During the war on terror, however, the United States has not been as inclusive as it was in its war against communism. Aside from those in the "coalition of the willing," even most European countries have distanced themselves from Washington.

The United States did not realize, moreover, the depth of the fault lines in Iraqi society -- between Kurds and Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites, and the members of different tribes and local religious groups. These tensions were contained during four centuries of Ottoman rule, and the British, who took over from the Ottomans in 1920, put Iraq under strong Sunni control, centered on Baghdad. Now, because of the destruction of the old Iraqi society, for the first time in centuries, power is in the hands of the Iraqi Shiites.

With Sunni control of Iraq removed, Shiite Iran is no longer checked from extending its influence westward. And by allowing the emergence of the first Shiite-dominated Arab state, the United States has stirred the political aspirations of the 150 million or so Shiites living in Sunni countries elsewhere in the region.

The United States has long relied on its traditional Sunni Arab allies, such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, to keep the Arab-Israeli conflict in check. Now the power of the Sunni bloc may no longer be able to counter an Iran that supports militias such as Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel. The new Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, found it necessary to publicly support the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon during the fighting this past summer.

I am not among those who say that it was wrong to have gone into Iraq to remove Saddam and who now advocate that the United States cut its losses and pull out. This will not solve the problem. If the United States leaves Iraq prematurely, jihadists everywhere will be emboldened to take the battle to Washington and its friends and allies. Having defeated the Russians in Afghanistan and the United States in Iraq, they will believe that they can change the world. Even worse, if civil war breaks out in Iraq, the conflict will destabilize the whole Middle East, as it will draw in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey.

On Iraq, the Singaporean government has been and is in firm support of President George W. Bush and his team. We have helped to train Iraqi police and have thrice deployed a tank landing ship to the Gulf, each time with about 170 personnel, a C-130 detachment, and three separate KC-135 detachments for air-to-air refueling missions. President Bush was right to invade Iraq to depose Saddam and try to remove the weapons of mass destruction that intelligence agencies in Europe and the United States assessed Iraq to have had.

But I became nervous when the United States disbanded the Iraqi army and police and dismissed all Baathists from the Iraqi government. I feared this would create a vacuum.

I recalled how when the Japanese captured Singapore in February 1942 and took 90,000 British, Indian, and Australian troops prisoner, they left the police and the civil administration intact and functioning -- under the control of Japanese military officers but with British personnel still in charge of the essential services, such as gas and electricity. Except for a small garrison, most of the 30,000 Japanese invasion forces had left Singapore and headed to Java within a fortnight. Had the Japanese disbanded the police and the civil administration when they interned the British forces, there would have been chaos.

Perceptions of U.S. unilateralism have triggered an informal countercoalition of necessity among those countries that oppose the coalition of the willing. Many in this countercoalition are not on the side of the jihadists. Russia and China, along with some European countries, have come together simply to protect their interests against what they perceive as U.S. encroachment on their respective domains. They have no fundamental conflict of interest with the United States.

To isolate the jihadist groups, therefore, the United States must be more multilateral in its approach and rally Europe, Russia, China, India, and all non-Muslim governments to its cause, along with many moderate Muslims. A worldwide coalition is necessary to fight the fires of hatred that the Islamist fanatics are fanning. When moderate Muslim governments, such as those in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Persian Gulf states, Egypt, and Jordan, feel comfortable associating themselves openly with a multilateral coalition against Islamist terrorism, the tide of battle will turn against the extremists.

REMAKING THE MIDDLE EAST

The Bush administration has set out to spread democracy in Iraq and the Middle East more generally. In the long run, democracy can prevail, but the process will not be easy.

A free and fair election, moreover, is not the best first step toward democracy in a country that has no history or tradition of self-government. Without adequate preparations, elections simply allow people to vent their frustrations against the corruption and inadequacies of the incumbents and vote in the opposition, regardless of its characteristics. This is what led to Hamas' gaining power in the Palestinian territories.

A better start would be to concentrate on education, the emancipation of women, and the creation of economic opportunity. Next should come a focus on implementing the rule of law, strengthening the independence of the courts, and building up the civil-society institutions necessary for democracy. Only then will free elections lead to a more democratic order.

To think that Iraq can go from dictatorship to democracy via two elections in three years is to expect too much. Such a transformation is an effort for the long haul, well beyond the two- and four-year U.S. electoral cycles.

In its struggles today, the United States should remember the principles and policies that guided its responses to Cold War threats and accept that no single power, religion, or ideology can conquer the world or remake it in its own image. The world is too diverse. Different races, cultures, religions, languages, and histories require different paths to democracy and the free market. Societies in a globalized world will influence and affect one another. And what social system best meets the needs of a people at a particular stage in their development will be settled internally.

Regarding the rest of the Middle East, Singapore is much indebted to Israel. When we became independent in 1965, Israel was the only country that helped us build a citizen army. The Israeli colonel who led a team of ten officers from 1966 to 1968 revisited Singapore as a brigadier general a decade later and was surprised at our economic progress. He lamented the slower economic progress in Israel. I told him we had been at peace with our neighbors and that Singapore's armed forces were a deterrent, a weapon of last resort against adventurism by any country. Israel, on the other hand, had been engaged in successive wars.

To solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there must be two states, one for Israel and another for the Palestinians. But the latter must be viable, one for which peace is worth making. The United States should urge Israel to encourage such a Palestinian state to emerge and help it prosper -- for the Palestinians will have reason to avoid war if war will destroy the future they are building for themselves.

Progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue would not just be beneficial in its own right but would also relieve Sunni Arab discontent that arises from the perception that their countries acquiesce in U.S. support for Israel against Palestinian interests. If the United States were seen to actively support the peace process with the goal of a two-state solution, Sunni governments would be more likely to openly support U.S. policies for peace in the greater Middle East.

As for Iran, it is publicly committed to the destruction of Israel and will try to sabotage any peace settlement, because the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is necessary for its fight against the Sunni Arab states for leadership of the Muslim world. Encouraged by North Korea's recent nuclear test, Iran will press ahead with its own nuclear program. If and when Tehran gets sufficient fissile material, the balance of power in the Gulf will be fundamentally changed. The Iranian problem will eclipse the Iraqi problem and be at the top of the international agenda. And if Iran's theocracy succeeds, it, not democracy, will be seen as the way of the future for many in Muslim countries.

COLLATERAL BENEFITS

The reason I am so focused on the Middle East is that my first close interaction with the United States grew out of the country's involvement in a previous painful struggle, that in Vietnam. Between 1966 and 1971, American leaders used to stop by Singapore after visiting South Vietnam to discuss the regional situation with me. Washington had sent in some 500,000 troops without sufficient knowledge of the history of the Vietnamese people and paid a huge price in blood, treasure, prestige, and confidence as a result.

Conventional wisdom in the 1970s saw the war in Vietnam as an unmitigated disaster. But that has been proved wrong. The war had collateral benefits, buying the time and creating the conditions that enabled noncommunist East Asia to follow Japan's path and develop into the four dragons (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) and, later, the four tigers (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand). Time brought about the split between Moscow and Beijing and then a split between Beijing and Hanoi. The influence of the four dragons and the four tigers, in turn, changed both communist China and communist Vietnam into open, free-market economies and made their societies freer.

The conventional wisdom now is that the war in Iraq is also an unmitigated disaster. But if the troubles in Iraq are addressed in a resolute, rather than a defeatist, manner, today's conventional wisdom can be proved wrong as well. A stabilized, less repressive Iraq, with its different ethnic and religious communities accepting one another in some devolved framework, can be a liberating influence in the Middle East.

The challenge now, as in the 1970s, is for the United States to find an honorable exit from a conflict that developed in an unexpected way. Once begun, however, the problem has to be seen through to the finish so that irreparable damage is not done to the United States and the world at large. An Iraq that coheres as one state; includes Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmen, and others; and is not manipulated by any of its neighbors represents an outcome that would accord with the interests of the United States, Iraq's neighbors, and the wider world. Washington should therefore bring all of Iraq's neighbors into the process of achieving this objective.

The next president will face a new world. There will be not just Iraq but also Iran to contend with, and the long-term fight against Islamist militants will still only be in its early rounds. But the United States overcame the setbacks of the war in Vietnam, checkmated Soviet expansion, and became the indispensable superpower. With a wide coalition and a proper attitude, the United States can prevail now as well.

This might have gone in any number of Army.ca fora but I put it here, in the ill-named ‘War on terror’ thread (I mean the war is misnamed, not the thread) because he touches on several aspects of the broader clash between the modern, secular, democratic, capitalist West and those movements which wish to drag their own peoples and, eventually, the whole world back into a barbaric theocracy.

I have three comments.

First: Like the Iraq Commission, Lee recognizes that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is closely bound amongst the tangled roots of the larger medieval Islam vs Civilization conflict.

I am  not persuaded that there is any acceptable solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict.  The state-to-state problems can, almost certainly, be solved but the real problem is not Arab states; the real problem is non-state movements which are armed, powerful, aggressive and, in the main, unwilling to accept the existence of Israel … or Jews.  These movements have no need to adopt any other position: Death to Israel! and Kill all the Jews! are popular sentiments amongst a solid majority of Muslims in the Middle east, North Africa and Central Asia – if the data I think I saw (Pew polls, etc) is correct.

Second: I wish President Bush, Prime Minister Harper and other Western leaders would read, think about and actually understand these few words:

” … In the long run, democracy can prevail, but the process will not be easy.

A free and fair election, moreover, is not the best first step toward democracy in a country that has no history or tradition of self-government. Without adequate preparations, elections simply allow people to vent their frustrations against the corruption and inadequacies of the incumbents and vote in the opposition, regardless of its characteristics. This is what led to Hamas' gaining power in the Palestinian territories.

A better start would be to concentrate on education, the emancipation of women, and the creation of economic opportunity. Next should come a focus on implementing the rule of law, strengthening the independence of the courts, and building up the civil-society institutions necessary for democracy. Only then will free elections lead to a more democratic order.

To think that Iraq can go from dictatorship to democracy via two elections in three years is to expect too much. Such a transformation is an effort for the long haul, well beyond the two- and four-year U.S. electoral cycles.

In its struggles today, the United States should remember the principles and policies that guided its responses to Cold War threats and accept that no single power, religion, or ideology can conquer the world or remake it in its own image. The world is too diverse. Different races, cultures, religions, languages, and histories require different paths to democracy and the free market. Societies in a globalized world will influence and affect one another. And what social system best meets the needs of a people at a particular stage in their development will be settled internally.”

We, Canadians, must understand that Lee Kwan Yew’s words apply to Afghanistan, too.  We will not, because we cannot, install democracy – not even a conservative democracy – in Afghanistan in our lifetimes or even in the lifetimes of our children and grand children.  Democracy, liberal or conservative, as we understand that term, is not natural for most societies.  It required, in the West and in East Asia, much struggle between people and medieval barons and mandarins and monarchs followed by a renaissance or two and religious reformations and counter-reformations and still ongoing liberal and conservative enlightenments.  Afghanistan is ill prepared to even think about democracy as anything other than a means to ’… vent their frustrations against the corruption and inadequacies of the incumbents …’ as we have seen, again and again in Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Third: We must also understand that a liberal democracy is not the only acceptable model.

As an aside: There are, now, a few conservative democracies – Singapore itself being the best example and several illiberal democracies.*  The former are, in my opinion natural and expected expressions of East Asian (Confucian) values in the 21st century; the latter are consistently weak and, I think doomed to fail.  Several EU members, including France, ar, at heart, illiberal democracies.

That aside, Afghanistan, like much of Central and West Asia and the Middle East and North Africa is both socially conservative and resolutely unenlightened.  Even after a couple or three generations it is unlikely that whatever democracy develops in that poor, tradition bound land will be liberal.  We must assume that Canadian soldiers will be home, and mostly in the old folks home, when Afghanistan becomes a democracy.  Our soldiers will have done their job when a lawfully elected government in Kabul can manage the affairs the country in reasonable security.  We may not like how they mange their own affairs but they key words are ”their own”.  It is not ‘our’ country, we are there to help make the system secure and stable enough for them decide, for themselves and in their own ways, how to manage their own affairs.  That’s it: make the place secure and provide a stable foundation, for the Afghans to run Afghanistan as they see fit – only running it in such a way as not to endanger Canada and its interests and those of friends and neighbours.

Lee Kwan yew has lived a long and eventful life.  His insights merit consideration – especially by George W Bush and his successors in the White House.


----------
* See Fareed Zachariah: Illiberal Democracy (Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 1997) and The Future of Freedom (the book is an expansion of the 1997Article) -  http://www.fareedzakaria.com/about.html

 

[Kirkhill]

” … In the long run, democracy can prevail, but the process will not be easy.

A free and fair election, moreover, is not the best first step toward democracy in a country that has no history or tradition of self-government. Without adequate preparations, elections simply allow people to vent their frustrations against the corruption and inadequacies of the incumbents and vote in the opposition, regardless of its characteristics. This is what led to Hamas' gaining power in the Palestinian territories.

A better start would be to concentrate on education, the emancipation of women, and the creation of economic opportunity. Next should come a focus on implementing the rule of law, strengthening the independence of the courts, and building up the civil-society institutions necessary for democracy. Only then will free elections lead to a more democratic order.

To think that Iraq can go from dictatorship to democracy via two elections in three years is to expect too much. Such a transformation is an effort for the long haul, well beyond the two- and four-year U.S. electoral cycles.

In its struggles today, the United States should remember the principles and policies that guided its responses to Cold War threats and accept that no single power, religion, or ideology can conquer the world or remake it in its own image. The world is too diverse. Different races, cultures, religions, languages, and histories require different paths to democracy and the free market. Societies in a globalized world will influence and affect one another. And what social system best meets the needs of a people at a particular stage in their development will be settled internally.”

We, Canadians, must understand that Lee Kwan Yew’s words apply to Afghanistan, too.  We will not, because we cannot, install democracy – not even a conservative democracy – in Afghanistan in our lifetimes or even in the lifetimes of our children and grand children.  Democracy, liberal or conservative, as we understand that term, is not natural for most societies.  It required, in the West and in East Asia, much struggle between people and medieval barons and mandarins and monarchs followed by a renaissance or two and religious reformations and counter-reformations and still ongoing liberal and conservative enlightenments.  Afghanistan is ill prepared to even think about democracy as anything other than a means to ’… vent their frustrations against the corruption and inadequacies of the incumbents …’ as we have seen, again and again in Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Third: We must also understand that a liberal democracy is not the only acceptable model.

As an aside: There are, now, a few conservative democracies – Singapore itself being the best example and several illiberal democracies.*  The former are, in my opinion natural and expected expressions of East Asian (Confucian) values in the 21st century; the latter are consistently weak and, I think doomed to fail.  Several EU members, including France, ar, at heart, illiberal democracies.

That aside, Afghanistan, like much of Central and West Asia and the Middle East and North Africa is both socially conservative and resolutely unenlightened.  Even after a couple or three generations it is unlikely that whatever democracy develops in that poor, tradition bound land will be liberal.  We must assume that Canadian soldiers will be home, and mostly in the old folks home, when Afghanistan becomes a democracy.  Our soldiers will have done their job when a lawfully elected government in Kabul can manage the affairs the country in reasonable security.  We may not like how they mange their own affairs but they key words are ”their own”.  It is not ‘our’ country, we are there to help make the system secure and stable enough for them decide, for themselves and in their own ways, how to manage their own affairs.  That’s it: make the place secure and provide a stable foundation, for the Afghans to run Afghanistan as they see fit – only running it in such a way as not to endanger Canada and its interests and those of friends and neighbours.

Lee Kwan yew has lived a long and eventful life.  His insights merit consideration – especially by George W Bush and his successors in the White House.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the Afghan situations, as far as I am concerned, is why more use has not been made of the Loya Jirga.  That seems to have been a well developed consultative process with a great deal of credibility from historical use.  It is beyond me why it couldn't have been the basis for at least one "House" in a bicameral legislature.  The Lords/Senate would seem to be a natural fit although given the current power of the Barons perhaps it would be a better "Commons" (except for the lack of women).  Maybe it can be employed as something like the Privy Council.

 

[Edward Campbell]

...
Second: ...
We, Canadians, must understand that Lee Kwan Yew’s words apply to Afghanistan, too.  We will not, because we cannot, install democracy – not even a conservative democracy – in Afghanistan in our lifetimes or even in the lifetimes of our children and grand children.  Democracy, liberal or conservative, as we understand that term, is not natural for most societies.  It required, in the West and in East Asia, much struggle between people and medieval barons and mandarins and monarchs followed by a renaissance or two and religious reformations and counter-reformations and still ongoing liberal and conservative enlightenments.  Afghanistan is ill prepared to even think about democracy as anything other than a means to ’… vent their frustrations against the corruption and inadequacies of the incumbents …’ as we have seen, again and again in Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Third: We must also understand that a liberal democracy is not the only acceptable model.

As an aside: There are, now, a few conservative democracies – Singapore itself being the best example and several illiberal democracies.*  The former are, in my opinion natural and expected expressions of East Asian (Confucian) values in the 21st century; the latter are consistently weak and, I think doomed to fail.  Several EU members, including France, ar, at heart, illiberal democracies.

That aside, Afghanistan, like much of Central and West Asia and the Middle East and North Africa is both socially conservative and resolutely unenlightened.  Even after a couple or three generations it is unlikely that whatever democracy develops in that poor, tradition bound land will be liberal.  We must assume that Canadian soldiers will be home, and mostly in the old folks home, when Afghanistan becomes a democracy.  Our soldiers will have done their job when a lawfully elected government in Kabul can manage the affairs the country in reasonable security.  We may not like how they mange their own affairs but they key words are ”their own”.  It is not ‘our’ country, we are there to help make the system secure and stable enough for them decide, for themselves and in their own ways, how to manage their own affairs.  That’s it: make the place secure and provide a stable foundation, for the Afghans to run Afghanistan as they see fit – only running it in such a way as not to endanger Canada and its interests and those of friends and neighbours ...
----------
• See Fareed Zachariah: Illiberal Democracy (Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 1997) and The Future of Freedom (the book is an expansion of the 1997Article) -  http://www.fareedzakaria.com/about.html

To pick up on my own points (where is the pats self on back icon?), here is an opinion piece by Sen. Colin Kenney from today’s (28 Dec 06) Ottawa Citizen, reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

My emphasis added.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=82fbe8cd-e183-45aa-a94c-66fa1578a2dd

Help them to help themselves

Colin Kenny, Citizen Special
Published: Thursday, December 28, 2006

All the NATO troops in the world won't suffice to secure Afghanistan. Eventually the Afghans are going to have to do their own fighting

Can Canada's involvement in the current NATO incursion in Afghanistan save that country from failing? Not a chance.

Can Canada's contribution give the Afghans a chance to save themselves from failing? Following months of listening closely to all kinds of analysis, then spending four days there this month, I'd say there's a fair chance.

Certainly the more than 300 young men and women that I and four other senators from the Committee on National Security and Defence talked to this month think there's a chance. I was encouraged by both their optimism and their lack of naivete about the enormousness of what needs to be done beyond firing bullets.

This is the essence of what we were hearing from a lot of them: As long as Canadians have no illusions about a quick fix, we may well be able to help the Afghans nudge themselves out of the Middle Ages in whichever ways they want to do that. Afghans may not want to do that in every way that westerners would recommend. But if we want to be realistic about what is doable, Canadians will have to accept that.

Our committee is going to issue a statement on our Afghanistan visit early in the New Year. But two days after our return, here are some personal thoughts:

After a long history of bloodshed, and foreign and homemade oppression, helping to give Afghans a sense of security is critical to getting the nudging process underway. So far, all the brave efforts of all the Canadians and their allies haven't produced that kind of security. In fact, at this stage the NATO presence in Kandahar has given southern Afghans more to worry about in terms of sheer survival, not less.

Quite bluntly, there is a war going on that wouldn't be happening if we weren't there. If you couple that with the Afghans' long-standing hatred of uninvited foreigners occupying their lands, it doesn't take long to figure out that at this point we're not exactly seen as the best thing to come along since either sliced bread or the local variety.

The problem is that we haven't been able to accomplish any of the three ends that Canada defines as essential to forays into troubled states: defeat would-be oppressors militarily; facilitate the creation of the kind of infrastructure and institutions that noble concepts like freedom and justice depend upon for survival; and do basic development projects that improve the lives of ordinary people.

Some critics in Canada complain that our military should spend less time chasing the Taliban and more time on development. That's a very romantic concept, and in the long run, a worthy one. Everyone over there knows that Canada's mission to Afghanistan will have been meaningless if we don't get involved in development. They also know that it will have to be development largely defined by the Afghans -- not Western textbook definitions of what constitutes emancipation and progress.

But nobody can get started down that road unless we can provide the security that development workers need to do their jobs. We kept being told that Canada is already involved in development projects, even in the Kandahar region. But the descriptions we got were hazy, and if these projects are taking place, the military said it was too dangerous to take us to any of them.

Nope, military progress has to be the first imperative, or nothing else is going to fall into place.

There are problems here. First, we only have 2,500 Canadians on the ground, and it takes 2,000 of them to support the 500 doing the fighting. NATO does not have enough fighters, and we will be hard pressed to offer any more.

But all the NATO troops in the world won't suffice. Eventually the Afghans are going to have to do their own fighting.

Foreign armies will always have a problem in Afghanistan. A strong national army would have far more popular support. But such an army needs training, and trainers who are willing to go to the battlefield with a national army until Afghan officers and senior non-commissioned members have developed the expertise to lead their troops.

Who will provide the extra troops NATO needs now, and who will step in and provide the extra NATO personnel needed to train an effective Afghan military and police force? Currently, the Dutch are there with us. The Americans are there. The British are there. But there are a lot of NATO members that simply won't go into this kind of dangerous territory.

If these countries end up sticking to their (lack of) guns, and don't buy into the NATO common approach to defence in the Afghanistan context, then there's not much Canada can do. We are trying to redefine and rebuild our whole military, and we can't do that if we continue to over-commit troops that are scarce after more than two decades of military neglect.

If these other NATO countries don't come through, there is little hope for sustainable military success. There are reports that the Taliban is regrouping in Pakistan in preparation for a massive offensive that would far outstrip anything our Canadian kids have seen to date -- and they've seen plenty.

Does that mean that Canada should pull out? No. We've committed ourselves until at least 2009. Unlike Iraq, the end is worthy here, and some degree of progress is attainable.

Other than our obvious interest in international peace and stability, Canada doesn't have an overriding interest in Afghanistan. We're there because it's right to be there, the way it would be right to be in Darfur (if we had the additional resources) and the way it was right to be there to help free Europe more than 60 years ago.

There are some European countries that need to remember how important it is to stand up for what is right. NATO is currently trying to figure out how best it can play a relevant role in the modern world. If NATO doesn't hurry up, the word relevant is going to pass it by.

And while that is happening, Afghanistan will probably slip away. Pity, because the soldiers we talked to know what many Canadians and Europeans are so doubtful about: If we team up and give these people some help, they still have a fighting chance. After what the outside world has done to Afghanistan over the years, we owe them that.

Senator Colin Kenny is chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. E-mail: kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca

© The Ottawa Citizen 2006​

The key points is this: the best we can do is to help the Afghans to help themselves and the hope (maybe nudge a bit, too) they will help themselves in ways which are not inimical to our, Canadian, vital interests.

I rather like Sen. Kenney’s broad, general reformulation of Canada’s 3D process in Afghanistan as:

1. Defeat would-be oppressors militarily;

2. Facilitate the creation of the kind of infrastructure and institutions that noble concepts like freedom and justice depend upon for survival; and

3. Do basic development projects that improve the lives of ordinary people.

I do not agree with this statement:

”Everyone over there knows that Canada's mission to Afghanistan will have been meaningless if we don't get involved in development.”

I think that’s a misstatement of the position which ought to be:

Everyone knows that Development, financed and aided by the West, is one of the three keys to allowing the Afghans to avoid falling back into the failed state mode.  That Development can be done best by various non-governmental organizations but it can be done only after NATO/ISAF has secured an area, as is the case in the North and West of Afghanistan.
 
With regard to Sen. Kenney’s last point, see: http://ruxted.ca/index.php?/archives/32-About-Turn!-Time-to-Revise-Canadas-Foreign-Policy.html where Ruxted says: ”NATO is less and less a useful 'cornerstone' for Canada and, more and more, a stumbling block.” and ”… it may be aiding and abetting the Taliban. NATO may be part of the problem.”

I do not agree with Sen. Kenney when he says that, ”… Canada doesn't have an overriding interest in Afghanistan. We're there because it's right to be there …”  Our overarching goal to be anywhere in the world must be to protect and promote our own vital interests.  In the case of Afghanistan Canadians need to recognize that:

• The Taliban and al Qaeda and many other similar movements are part of a larger thrust which aims to reshape the Islamic Crescent* into a unified, barbaric and powerful theocracy which will, then, be able to attack and defeat the secular, democratic West and impose its medieval social/cultural norms on the entire world;

• Canada is firmly in the sights of these movements – Osama bin Laden, for example, has, publicly, declared us to be a target.  We are his sworn enemy; and

• We need to protect ourselves and our way of life by defeating would-be oppressors militarily and create the kind of infrastructure and institutions that noble concepts like freedom and justice depend upon for survival so that failed states like Afghanistan cannot be used as firm bases by enemies like al Qaeda.

That’s a lot more than just ‘doing the right thing’ in the world.


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* Morocco through North Africa and the Middle East to West and Central Asia and down through Malaysia to Indonesia.


Edit: Typo - "I do not agree with Sen. Kenney when he ..."

 

[GAP]

With Edwards' exceptions, I really enjoyed reading Kenny's read on Afghanistan. It is refreshing to have a politician basically say it like it is, not mouth words to score political points for the upcoming election.

This should also help take the wind out Jack's sails ( and a little out of Dion's if he was considering changing the Liberal position).

 

[GAP]

Kenya closes border with Somalia
Associated Press
Article Link

Nairobi — Kenya said Thursday it has closed its border with Somalia in an apparent effort to keep Islamic militants and refugees from entering the country.

“The Kenyan border is officially closed,” Foreign Affairs Minister Raphael Tuju told The Associated Press, but he did not say when the decision was made or how long the border would remain closed.

Kenya has sent extra troops to its northern frontier with Somalia.

The UN's humanitarian agency said Wednesday that about 4,000 Somali refugees were reported to be near the Somali border town of Dhobley, unable to cross into Kenya.

That same day, a Kenyan security helicopter and a Kenyan air force plane were fired at by unidentified gunmen on either side of the border. Mr. Tuju said he had no information on the incidents.

The minister told journalists Wednesday that Kenya will not allow Somali refugees into the country following the routing of Somalia's Islamic movement, because Kenya did not know of any threat facing the refugees.
More on link

 

[MarkOttawa]

Very good, wide-ranging CGAI podcast with Andrea Charron, Eugene Lang, Dick Fadden:

"Defence Deconstructed: 9/11 and Lessons Learned" (Canada)

https://soundcloud.com/user-609485369%2Fdefence-deconstructed-911-and-lessons-learned

Mark
Ottawa