Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

On my broadcast today I had international relations expert Eric Margolis as well as Scott Taylor, publisher of Esprit de Corp magazine. Both weighed-in on the announcement yesterday by Stephen Harper to increase funding for the military.

It was a strange media event. The national media virtually ignored it too. It seemed to be a warmed-up previous announcement. There were no specifics regarding procurement — only generalities and extreme 20 year timelines and the earnestness of our PM highlighted by men and women in camouflage standing obediently behind him as stage props. The point Harper was making was that after years of neglect, the needs of the Canadian forces were being addressed. The truth is, there is a lot of catch-up to play and, at the end of it, with inflation etc, we will not be much better off really – even in 20 years and 20 billion dollars in.

The Afghanistan adventure is quickly eating up resources (8 billion) with costs rising. While the Federal Liberals have been callous and ruthless with military budgets over the years, the Conservatives are still not spending enough to cover what we are churning and burning through – not to mention lives.

I’ll come back to Afghanistan in a minute.

There is reason why, historically, we have been so cavalier about defense spending in Canada: the foreign ownership of all sectors of the Canadian economy, more than any other developed country according to Mel Hurtig (also on today) the author of “The Truth about Canada”. We have progressed from being a former British protectorate to being an American protectorate. Most of what we have to defend in Canada belongs to others anyway, and outsiders have no reason to take — or attack — what already belongs to them.

Now, here we sit, in May of 2008, with growing public disaffection with the whole
Afghanistan adventure, according to Mario Canseco, Director of Global Studies for Angus Reid. Calling from Vancouver, Canseco detailed the Angus Reid survey regarding our robust role in the Central Asian state where most of us are just saying “what the hell”?

So, what happens if we leave Afghanistan?

Shockingly, nothing happens.

The Pashtun tribes people (Taliban) will fight the Warlords. There will be some kind of arrangement (the same thing that has happened for hundreds of years), and Afghanistan will go on.

What about Al Qaeda? Won’t they be threat and plan another 9/11?  Answer: no.  

The Taliban leadership never knew that Osama Bin Laden was planning the September 11 attacks until they happened. They knew that the U.S. would retaliate. Small scale attacks on U.S. Middle Eastern or African embassies or other assets were one thing, but an attack on New York on such a scale? No. Don’t forget, the West had been doing business with the Taliban. Heroin production was extremely low during this period too.  

Right now, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden himself, as well as his top lieutenant Al Zawarhi, are hiding out in the tribal areas of Pakistan (our ally) and are operational. Afghanistan is unneeded as a haven. Bin Laden and co. has a new one. Moreover, the stinking cesspool of terror that is the Sudan in Africa (Osama’s former home before he packed up and moved to Afghanistan because we pressured him), is still operational; the Muslim extremists and anti-American warlords in Somalia (remember “Black Hawk Down”?) are still very much there, as are the terrorists in Lebanon that killed US troops with a massive truck bomb in the 1980’s are still there. In fact, Reagan left Lebanon right afterwards.

The sky didn’t fall in.

Nor did we invade Somalia (again) or the Sudan, or Libya, or Saudi Arabia where they grow, or Pakistan where they hide, or any number of countries that are part of the “terror” process. What “we” did do was invade secular Iraq which had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and, of course, Canada in Afghanistan.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but we will never win in Afghanistan as long as the Pashtun tribesmen and Taliban are supplied from Pakistan – and they will always be. It is their home, their region. They have nowhere to go and are highly motivated. When we beat them back they just crawl back across the border and reconstitute. Manpower is unlimited. It costs them nothing. They have nothing — and nothing to lose.

So, what about us?

There is no military solution. The issue of bringing women the vote over there and reformation of their tribal society is pure Canadian propaganda nonsense.

While we waste money, resources, and, especially, lives in Afghanistan, the world keeps turning, ignoring our tokenism, our folly and our ignorance of Afghani history; our grand, white, arrogance.

And the old brown hills, and the lonely, cold mountain ranges of Afghanistan look down, like a wise old man does upon a child he can no longer help, and with whom he can no longer speak.