More dead in Afghanistan...

I was going to start off by mentioning that what prompted this entry was recent the death of Pte. Kevin McKay in Afghanistan, and his homecoming down the 'Highway of Heroes' on the weekend. It looks like another Canadian soldier,  however, was killed in Afghanistan just today. I honestly don't know how many that makes now... somewhere between 140 and 150?

I never approved of Canada taking part in the invasion of Afghanistan, not even at the beginning. I had an argument with my dad about it. He's not a big jingoistic warhead or anything, but he did spend over 20 years in the service and so he has his own perspective about the place and uses of the military that differs from mine – I will quite freely admit here that I've never had to serve the country in that capacity. But that in and of itself doesn't invalidate my opinion... or shouldn't, anyway.

In what I've heard referred to as "mission drift", a lot of people have forgotten why Canada took part in the invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001. It wasn't to get rid of the Taliban, although that's become the standard line the "truth" has morphed into. No, we entered Afghanistan to aid in apprehending Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda agents suspected to be responsible for the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, about a month earlier (and I will admit, as much as I opposed it, that standing on principle and saying "no" to the US at that moment in time was nearly impossible — look at the scorn heaped on France two years later over Iraq — and the world of Realpolitik has taken us someplace we really shouldn't have gone). What actually happened, if you recall, was that the US demanded of the Afghan government the handover of these people. The Afghans responded by saying first that they did not know the whereabouts of these people, and that secondly, even if they did, they would have to be shown the evidence in order to extradite them under international law. The United States and its blue-eyed posse basically replied, "Badges? We don't need no steenking badges!" and off we all went; due process and respect for the sovereignty of (non-Western, non-nuclear) nations be damned. Well, Osama's still out there, somewhere, so I guess the Afghans weren't lying about not knowing where the guy is, because after eight and half years, we don't know, either. And so we've conveniently put that out of our minds and the war in Afghanistan has become about liberating the place and instilling democracy. You know, for its own good... the way we used to force Christianity on other countries for their own good. But of course, that was wrong. What we're doing now couldn't possibly be wrong... because it's good, right?...

We come to these questions of absolutes. And I've heard people say that there are some ways of living that are inherently better than others. I heard it from Churchill with his crack about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others. I heard it recently during a rum-fueled debate I had with a friend about our role in Afghanistan (and its original reason had apparently slipped his mind, too; he was under the misapprehension that we were "peacekeeping" there – a very recent, and very wrong, misuse of a valued term for a beautiful idea). It's unquestionable that there are things that human beings in general naturally find more agreeable; the problem comes in assuming that everything one happens to find agreeable or valuable is therefore desirable for all humanity, at all times, and in all circumstances. It also ignores that fact that there is no society human beings can forge in which everyone is happy, in which no one is disadvantaged, in which there are no winners and losers, no parasitism and no victims. They exist in our own culture, though we, naturally, wave them off blithely as ragged ends to an otherwise perfect tapestry we can't remedy, or whose fault is in themselves rather than the nature of our society. But we're all too eager to point to the faults and monstrousness of other societies as endemic and curable... by us.

The obvious example here is the Taliban. Are the Taliban bad guys? Do they do awful things? Would I want to live in a country run by people like them? Well, to answer the last question, no, I wouldn't. I wasn't brought up in a country like that. But that's the point: for people who were, that's the norm; indeed, it may even be to them a sensible and desirable way to live. There are myriad ways for human beings to group themselves and govern themselves in societies, and people triumph, progress, fail, and suffer in different ways in all of them. I can have my own preferences for how to live, and wish for others to share it, without granting myself the right to bring that about by force. Those are not the same things.

Consider the virtual miracle of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. It seemed to happen so suddenly that we could hardly believe it. Victor Hugo's immortal words, " Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come" were never more blazingly illustrated. But I would remind champions of spreading democracy at the point of a bayonet that Eastern Europe was not "liberated" by the Western world bombing it back to the Stone Age. What the Western world provided was an example, a measure of success, and a standard of conduct that people could point to and aspire to; in the long run, a sea the apparatchiks could not hold back. But we didn't liberate Eastern Europe: the peoples of Eastern Europe did: slowly at first – risings in East Germany, a failed revolution in Hungary, the Prague Spring – but later, with increasing speed, as Eastern economies ossified and labour movements like Solidary sprang up that could not be countered without fear of more revolution. The idea's time had come. They were persuaded of the merits of our system, and acted to adopt them, and in the end they joined us. But the peoples of those countries did it themselves.

What I mean by this is that we have no more right to impose what we believe to be good, right, and just on Afghanistan than we did in Eastern Europe. If our way of life and our values are attractive to the people of Afghanistan, then they will take root there. But it will be the right, and the duty, of Afghans to bring that change about; it is neither our right nor our duty to insist from behind rifles, naval bombardment, or dropped from 50,000 feet. The corollary of this is to simply imagine the shoe being on the other foot. If it were the Taliban (who, after all, are certainly as convinced of the correctness of their values and their inherent superiority to those of ours) who were possessed of nuclear weapons, supersonic aircraft, and deep blue navies capable of arriving at our shores, would they then be right to invade us and instill their values here for "our own good"? If that idea makes you uncomfortable, then so should the idea that it's right when we do it.

There are other examples. The British Empire dispensed with slavery without a civil war, and over a generation before the United States finally undertook to do so. During the mid-19th century, it's unquestionable that the British Empire was powerful enough to have militarily enforced that moral on the United States – or at least, certainly have given it a damn good try. But they didn't. Why not? Because there existed a respect for similarly-complexioned country; one that caused them to agree to disagree. In the end, the appeal to what people felt to be true, deep down, about doing unto others won out, though it took four years of terrible war. If you don't think the British would have been justified in invading the United States to force an end to slavery, how can you justify the invasion of Afghanistan on the basis that it will, supposedly, end discrimination against women?

Similarly, the former dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, was recently in Britain for medical care. During his stay there, a crusading judge in Spain issued a warrant for his arrest and extradition to Spain on the basis of crimes against humanity, for which the man has immunity at home. The British squirmed, hummed and hawed, but in the end, denied the request and let the man go home. This was almost certainly the wrong thing to do, but the British had their (cynical) reasons, and did what they did. It was their right as a sovereign state. Even if it were possible, would Spain have been justified in simply bombing London flat and demanding the British hand over Pinochet, simply because they said so? If you don't think so, then ask yourself how doing exactly the same thing to Afghanistan over Osama bin Laden can be right.

We have now been in Afghanistan longer than we were in the Second World War. Half again as long, in fact. We are "successful" only where Allied boots are actually on the ground. The moment they move on, that part of Afghanistan reverts to being whatever it is that Afghanistan is meant to be, by the will of the people who actually live there. This lesson has been learned time and time again in the modern age, and yet, somehow, forgotten time and time again. It's as though each generation has to learn it over again, but still won't credit it, thinking instead that the previous generation simply got something wrong, and that this time, it'll be different...

We can't "win" in Afghanistan because there's nothing to win. Canadian and Allied soldiers will continue to die in their hundreds and thousands fighting for a catch-22 — forcing democracy on someone — until we finally swallow our pride, admit that it was a fool's errand, and give the country back to the people who own it – to decide for themselves, among themselves, what it will and will not be – to make it in their own image, whatever that might be. That's exactly the same right we claim for ourselves, and it's the one we really do have a duty to provide.

It had to be said

I was wondering when someone would finally have the courage to say it.

Twenty-one-year-old Trooper Karine Blais died in Afghanistan Monday, the 117th Canadian soldier to die in that country since we invaded it in October of 2001. Afghanistan just passed a law that makes it legal for a husband to rape his wife. This is what Canadian and other Western soldiers have died, are dying, and will no doubt continue to die for. A land that doesn't want us there and does not share our values.

Blais's godfather, Mario Blais, has said publically, "I think she did this for absolutely nothing." I would tend to agree.

There are, no doubt, voices in this country that will be quick to shout that this is not an atypical opinion, coming from Quebec with its long history of resistance to Canada's involvement in foreign wars. Of course, the flip side of that coin is that English Canada could be characterized as having a history of being all-too-willing to involve this country in foreign wars. In some cases, notably World War Two, it was arguably necessary. But not in this case. We entered this war largely out of sympathy for the US in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, to catch the men responsible – notably, Osama bin Laden. That man remains at large. Meanwhile, we are seven and a half years, and ten dozen soldiers, bogged down in Afghanistan.

And for what? A democratically-arrived-at decision that a man has the right to rape his wife?

It's time our soldiers stop dying for nothing. Well past time. It needed to be said.

Toothless ideas

I had a car accident once, many years ago, where I ended up upside down in a ditch. The roof of the car was dented in about six inches, and the rear axle was broken. A guy in a utility vehicle came along and stopped to make sure I was alright. Looking the car over, he told me it wasn't so bad; a run through a car wash and no one would know the difference. For years, I held those two ideas in my head side by side. Rear axle broken... ah, but if I could only have rolled it back onto the road and washed the mud off... It was years, literally, before those ideas met in my head, and the illogic of holding them both finally dawned on me. Strange, but true.

The front page of today's Globe and Mail quotes Mishelle Brown, wife of a Canadian warrant officer slain in Afghanistan:

“We may not be able to beat the Taliban. There's lots of things in our life we can't beat. … But do you give up? Do you stop? Absolutely not. One person can't make a difference. But if we band together, we can.”

I feel for her, having lost her husband. But statements like this make no sense. It's like saying "Maybe I can't chew through a brick wall, but will I give up? Heck, no, they're only teeth! If I use all 32, well..." Admitting something's impossible and then turning around and suggesting it's possible anyway is the same kind of thinking I maintained all those years after the car accident. "If we all band together"? What does she think the CAF and the allies have been doing for the past seven and a half years?

I'm sorry, but when facing a wall we can't chew through, or an enemy our own prime minister has admitted we can't defeat, I can think of better uses for our teeth and our country's soldiers than continuing to grind them down till there's blood. Frankly, I thought we were evolving beyond this sort of thinking. How many Vietnams does it take?

Welcome to the Republic of Bananada

So it's come to this. I was treated to this slogan on my way in this morning. "Support Our Troops" is a little too subtle for some people. The new slogan, as loquacious as it is anti-democratic, is "If you can't stand behind our troops we'll gladly put you in front of them". It's a slogan Chile's General Pinochet could have been proud of. In the minds of some, a lack of patriotism -- as defined by them; by others, it would be not patriotism but bloodlust and bellicosity -- is punishable by death by firing squad.

The conservative element of this country, as always, at its finest.

The Fate of the Union

I caught the last half of George Bush's State of the Union address more or less by accident last night, and ironically, on the BBC. I think it's the first time in my life I've watched a State of the Union address. It was revealing.

I have to ask the question: is there an opposition in the United States? I mean, really? The way I'm used to thinking of an opposition? Because I saw a whole lot of people sitting in a big semi-circle focused on this guy. There was no telling one party from another. Not by where they sat. Not by how they behaved. Not by their reactions to what he was saying. They applauded as one. They rose as one. Honest to God, I was reminded of watching the Politburo under Brezhnev.

I tried to imagine people sitting on opposite sides of the House of Commons behaving as one, reacting as one, during the Speech from the Throne. The idea is chilling. A statement from the executive ought to be a challenge to the opposition... not to oppose just for its own sake, but to criticize, suggest, improve, defend. I saw nothing like that last night. I saw a man call on his countrymen for more money they didn't have to draw more blood that wasn't theirs, and a nation on its feet in the form of Congress in accord. It was evil. I feel that's a fitting word for it. To me, it looked wholly evil.

A man who talks of "tearists" getting "nuculer" weapons purports to lead the Free World, or at least its most powerful member. He does not allow discordant facts to dissuade him from action or threats. It's as though all the world were wed to a man who will not believe in the fidelity of his spouse. "Come on, I know you slept with my brother last summer at the cottage; admit it! Come clean, it'll be alright. What, you just compliment his shirt, and that's supposed to mean nothing? Alright, what about Bob at the convention last spring? What, I'm supposed to believe it's just a coincidence you just happen to like the same wine? Admit it! Why do you lie to me?" But there's no divorcing this guy. And he has a proven predilection for domestic violence.

The US economy is circling the bowl with dollar bill toilet paper, but aside from a few platitudes and the promise of spending more money the US doesn't have, hardly a word of concern. But he really lights up when he talks about putting a glass to the wall to hear what people in other rooms are up to, and asking for more Superman outfits to kick in their doors and set them straight. It was entirely revolting. If the Free World is a gang, does having a bloodthirsty psychopath as a member really qualify as an asset? Especially one who thinks he's running the show and calling the shots for us all?

The torch is being passed to southeast Asia... that was probably inevitable, but George Bush really greased the wheels with oil and blood that his great-grandchildren will still be paying for. I honestly feel we're watching the decline of the United States, and with it, the eclipse of the West as the principal civilization of the world. I think those days are ending. There was probably always a reckoning due. But it probably didn't need to be either this sudden, or this pronounced.

That's the State of the Union, folks.

US to resume nuke testing — guess where?

WASHINGTON — On the heels of a recent announcement from Tokyo that the Japanese whaling fleet would resume killing humpback whales "for scientific purposes" since their numbers have recovered in recent years, the Pentagon today announced that, since Japanese numbers have nicely recovered since the Second World War, the United States will resume the atomic bombing of Japanese cities.

"Obviously the Japanese have recovered to the point where blasting three or four of their cities a year will be sustainable," said USAF General Howie Friezum. "We're doing this for scientific purposes, of course. We got some great data in 1945, after all, and our studies have really suffered as a result of the moratorium."

The General went on to outline what his team hoped to accomplish. "Our researchers want to know how many Japanese cities have to be vaporized before they own up to Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanking, the brutal occupation of Manchuria, the abomination of Korean "comfort women", modern Japan's near refusal to accept refugees, and so on. We've been utterly fascinated by these ongoing displays of the complete and utter inability to demonstrate either empathy with or sympathy for others, all the while inserting self-pitying references to the nuclear devastation of Japanese cities into every movie, book, anime, and cat food commercial produced in Japan in the last sixty years. So, I guess time will tell."

When asked which city would be experimented upon first, the General said, "To reveal that would be to risk affecting the outcome of the experiment. Besides, why ruin the surprise?"

Why I'm not wearing the poppy this year

It occurred to me a few weeks ago, and it was a disquieting thought. It still is. But it would be meaningless if it weren't. This year, I won't be wearing a poppy.

It really does go against the grain for me. My dad served in the Royal Canadian Navy for two decades. His father was a volunteer in the Second World War and served in campaigns in Italy and France. On my mother's side, one of my great grandfathers died in the Battle of the Somme. All of that means something to me. I don't take it lightly. I myself have never served in uniform, and so I approach the memory of all that with, I think, due reverence.

But they key word there is "due". Respect should come from the heart, and it should be spontaneous and sincere. That's been the experience of it for me, in my lifetime. Just lately, I've begun seeing lines crossed I am not comfortable to see crossed. Not in this country.

Things are different from when I was younger, and in ways I don't agree with. When I was young, we weren't involved in imperial wars. NATO troops were about holding the line in Europe and defending us from invasion: collective security, we called it. When Canadians did go abroad outside the alliance, it was as peacekeepers, their presence mutually-requested by belligerents, working under the UN flag. Wherever we went, we were invited. Respected. People believed in peace and our actions backed up our words.

I'm disturbed by the trends today. Now, at least since the Balkans War, NATO troops go gallivanting off under the flag of that supposedly-defensive alliance to invade other people's homes: collective projection of force. We've perverted the idea of "peacekeeping" to include invasions where we spoon feed other people our cultures and values, insisting we know what's best because we're wealthy and stronger than they are. Millions of Canadians drive around our cities and towns with "Support Our Troops" magnetic ribbons cynically slapped on the backs of their gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks, little more than the modern version of slavery advocates who waxed eloquent about bringing the word of God to the heathen masses.

When I was a boy, Remembrance Day was a big occasion. We would spend days in class reading about it, preparing for it, creating decorations and writing poems about the fallen and the horrors of war. We would have assemblies. It was even a day off where I lived. In short, it was about highlighting the strangeness of war, how foreign it was to our lives and experience, how unthinkable and deadly it was, and how grateful we needed to be for that and to those who answered the call when there was no choice.

But today, we choose wars. We don't remember the fallen with bitterness and sorrow, ordinary people lost needlessly to human failings, but instead we glorify the loss itself, elevating those who die, or even just serve, to something higher, sometimes hinting at the sort of post-facto deification of great men in the Roman Empire. I find this an unsettling change in the nature of our society.

I spent most of my childhood in a city that was effectively a huge military base with its collateral industries and services. But even there, there was a dividing line between the military and the civilian aspects of life. Highways and buildings and parks had bland, ordinary names, having to do with their function or geography or in memory of politicians who shaped our lives. But now, even here in Ontario, in just the past year I've seen the stretch of the 401 between Trenton and Toronto redubbed "The Highway of Heroes", and an ongoing attempt to rename the Don Valley Parkway "The Veterans Memorial Parkway". This need to retroactively rebrand the casual things of ordinary life with a military stamp, to force a kind of automatic salute from everyday people, to inject a military note into the melody of civilian life... it alarms me. This was not the way of things even during the Cold War; in fact, it seems to have effectively been brought about by its end. It's as though once the real consequences of taking military action were gone, the restraints came off, and suddenly this ugly blossom was free to open. Those darker, ancient urges at the base of our brainstems could speak their names again in daylight.

I respect our veterans for the things they did, particularly those who really did fight in war and those who suffered and died. But we have so many appropriate venues to express that respect. Remembrance Day (if only we would give it its due again). The cenotaphs to be found in every Canadian village and town. The National War Memorial on Parliament Hill; indeed, the National War Museum in Ottawa. Vimy Ridge in France: a memorial to a country's sacrifice on par with anything else the world has to offer — I might go so far as to say, in some eyes, unparalleled. But to force it into our consciousness and subconsciousness on a normal level, to cause us to wade through it on our way to work and school and in our entertainments and diversions, these are dangerous inclinations that ought to be resisted. They're actually a violation of the things for which those long ago sacrifices were made, the very things that gave rise to the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that we now disregard, scoff at, or circumvent while paying them lip service only. There were reasons people came together to create them, and we are in danger of forgetting all that, and replacing it with a casual, blasé acceptance of the permanence and even desirability of violence. This is what we're telling young people today... it's very different from what I was told, no matter how subtle the change might seem.

I'm not wearing the poppy this year. It's because I hope to recover the Canada the poppy made. We're losing it, if it isn't lost already.

From the folks who brought you Pearl Harbor...

Japan calls ships home, ending role in Afghan war
By Norimitsu Onishi
Published: November 1, 2007

TOKYO: The Japanese Defense Ministry ordered its naval ships home from the Indian Ocean on Thursday, ending for now a six-year mission in the war in Afghanistan that raised the nation's military presence overseas but had drawn increasing domestic criticism.

A destroyer and supply ship that had been refueling U.S. and other warships were recalled at 3 p.m., as a special law authorizing the mission was set to expire at midnight. The government of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda was unable to renew the law because of opposition from the Democratic Party, which seized control of Parliament's upper house in a landslide victory over the summer.

The United States had urged Japan to extend the refueling mission, which, while largely symbolic, provided important diplomatic support for Washington. The mission, based on a "special antiterrorism law," constituted the pacifist country's main contribution to the Bush administration's war on terror.

"To eradicate terrorism in solidarity with the international community, our country must fulfill its responsibility by continuing the refueling mission by all means," Fukuda said in a prepared statement.

Fukuda's government has introduced a new refueling bill in Parliament and could use its control of the lower house to override any objections from the opposition. But even if the government adopted this strategy - a potentially unpopular one, given a public divided over the naval deployment - the refueling mission would not resume for several months.

The law's expiration underscored the current political deadlock in Japan. The governing Liberal Democratic Party suffered a devastating loss over the summer because of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's mishandling of bread-and-butter issues. Abe's subsequent abrupt resignation created a political vacuum that made it impossible to renew the special law before the Nov. 1 deadline.

Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, has vowed to use his grip on the upper house to force Fukuda to dissolve the lower house and call a general election. Fukuda does not have to call a general election for two more years, but the opposition can effectively shut down government by blocking this Afghanistan bill and others.

Analysts predict that Fukuda may call a general election in the spring after passing the next budget, which needs only the endorsement of the more powerful lower house.

While the refueling mission has become tied up in electoral politics, the opposition's objections also reflect a deeper disagreement over Japan's foreign policy. This time, the debate has not been over whether Japan should participate in overseas missions, but how.

Ozawa, who has long advocated dispatching Japanese troops overseas in United Nations-led missions, has argued that Japan should not back the United States unilaterally. Ozawa has argued that the Afghanistan mission violated Japan's pacifist Constitution, but that Japan should send ground peacekeeping troops to Sudan or even Afghanistan as long as they are deployed under the UN umbrella.

Support for the Afghanistan mission also suffered from public opposition to the war in Iraq and its unease over the Japanese government's unwavering backing of the Bush administration.

That unease was heightened over the government's inability to refute clearly the opposition's claims that fuel intended for the war in Afghanistan had actually been diverted to Iraq. Until the opposition's recent victory, the governing party had deflected questions about the mission so that it had received relatively little attention in the media.

"This mission of the last six years is coming to an end just as we were starting discussions on its nature and significance," said Naoto Kan, the acting president of the Democratic Party.

Through August, Japan had provided more than $190 million in fuel to warships from 11 countries, with nearly 80 percent of the total going to American ships, according to the Defense Ministry.

Who needs the Democrats?

Welcome to the United Parties of (North) America. This from The Globe and Mail.

Liberals soften stand on pullout date

ALAN FREEMAN
June 6, 2007

OTTAWA -- Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion yesterday opened the door to keeping Canadian troops in Afghanistan after February, 2009, but insisted they would have to be withdrawn from their current combat mission in the volatile southern region.

Speaking to reporters, Mr. Dion said he wants the combat mission of Canada's 2,500 soldiers based in Kandahar to end, but said Canada could still retain troops to assist the NATO mission.

...The Liberals have been adamant in saying that Canada should advise NATO that it will be ending its military commitment in Afghanistan in early 2009 and pulling out its troops. But in recent weeks, the Liberals have been expressing a more nuanced view, saying that they would be willing to support a scaled-back military presence, provided Canadian troops were redeployed to less dangerous parts of the country.