Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Afghan leader Hamid Karzai met with Canadian reporters this week as part of his PR campaign. A similar campaign exists concurrently to “sell” the Afghanistan mission to the Canadian public by politicos and members of the military.

The military has the highest political and social and budgetary (economic) status when it is engaged in a combat role. Bureaucracies crave both power and expansion. The military is no different; having troops die and killing is sexier, and more sensational, than the traditional Care Bear, blue-bereted Peacekeeper — unfortunately. General Hillier and the rest of the military brass may hate casualties, but they love the status achieved by combat (their peace protestations notwithstanding). 

Ironically, what we witnessed in the United States in 2003 was a civilian leadership that whipped both the State Department and the Generals to war and humiliated them when they exhibited either military prudence or caution — punished for being conservative, in other words.

It is in this environment of gross strategic Whitehouse failure that we see the Western appointed Karzai holding court in his Kabul palace; and with symmetrically placed flags by his shoulders, and with a manicured grey bearded face, Karzai projected concern and solemnity as he explained how great we are and how useful Canada is in protecting his rule and the other warlords who confect the “new” Afghanistan.

“If Canada leaves, we will be attacked,” Karzai shock-cautioned.

Actually, he is wrong: Canada risks being a target the longer we are there, not the other way around. Besides, 2,500 Canadian troops does not centuries-old, tribal reformation make. If so, Afghanistan would have been reformed dozens of times, and it would have evolved differently – it wouldn’t even be Afghanistan.

If 2,500 Canadian troops are all that stand between Karzai and chaos, why bother? Chaos is coming anyway.

By contrast, General Colin Powell’s doctrine was to avoid “wars of choice,” in favor of employing massive force in strategic and combined arms warfare in order to totally dominate with full (but understandably limited) political backing back home. Wars would be fast, lethal, and short with massive manpower and ordnance employed.

On the other side of this military equation lies the Former Secretary of Defense and celebrated stand-up comic Donald Rumsfeld. He quickly facilitated what was/is termed the “revolution in military affairs,” which called for smaller, more mobile, high tech, special teams. The reduced manpower footprint meant less of a political footprint because fewer folks would come home in body bags. Voters don’t like body bags for some reason.

Well, high tech, smaller teams are okay for deconstruction, but you still have to hold territory — something the U.S. failed to do in Iraq because they didn’t have enough men (and then they stupidly disbanded The Iraqi army), and something that the U.S. really failed to do in Afghanistan. The American force now is only a token force. Sadly, Afghanistan, for America, is a sideshow.

Here’s my question: why should Afghanistan be Canada’s number one military priority when it is not Americas?

Many in the world were also very confused when the U.S., attacked on 9/11 from a plot cooked in Khandahar, was extremely reluctant to commit manpower to the Afghanistan invasion from the outset. Why not put boots on the ground and lots of them? Instead, smaller CIA teams and Special Forces and warlord proxies were utilized. But why? Insanely, and recklessly, America was already planning for Iraq – a country that never attacked them on 9/11, and with a state dictator, Saddam Hussein, who hated fundamentalists like Osama.

That’s how Osama Bin Laden escaped. No American manpower in the mountains of Tora Bora in 2002, and now, only a token force in Afghanistan.

Let us now examine this whole idea of “progress” in Afghanistan. This is the pillar of the “Afghan mission sale.”

Simply put, there is no progress. The emperor has no clothes. Even crusty Christie Blatchford, a Conservative army cheerleader if ever there was one, who was there and who reported from the field, characterized the Canadian military effort in Afghanistan as “Sisyphean”– a reference to philosopher/novelist Albert Camus’ allegory of futility (the man who pushes the rock up the hill only to have it always roll back down).

But futility is not the issue here; it is military power, and budgets, and prestige.

The generals that benefit the most from the photo ops, and the drivers, and the buffets, and the cocktail parties, and the meetings with the important politicians, and the nice salaries, never come home in body bags.

And they always give the orders.