Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

The government of Canada refuses to come clean on the real costs of the counter insurgency in Afghanistan. We just don’t know. Officials now admit that we are not doing as well as we’d hoped – that’s called losing.

And while billions are being spent in Afghanistan our Navy goes without. With the ice cap melting, more and more Russians are taking the trip to mark their territory like a dog on a neighborhood post. Billions more dollars are at stake under the melting ice off shore.

And it is the off shore riches under the ice cap that our American friends want too. America does not accept some of our current Arctic territorial claims; imagine what the future will be like! As usual, Canada will cooperate. When it comes to Russia, Canada will only be successful when America backs our land claims in order to have their oil companies get the contract.

The more we divert money to the army to assist in America’s failed Afghan policy, the less capable we are at defending our own real, strategic interests in the Arctic. In terms of military expenditures, there are constraints here — this country will not support the percentage of GDP defense budgets that the U.S. does. Here, there are limits. It also takes years to build ships. We need to act now to support our Navy to protect our territorial waters. Yet, where are the new Destroyers? Where is the plan for the Navy?

The recent Tory fulminations on long-term military spending were a show, and nothing more. The good military intentions on the part of the Harper government were honest, the attempt to further brand the Conservative Party with the military was honest, but the short-term realities as presented were disingenuous: all the dough is going to Afghanistan. Also, Minority governments today cannot project themselves 20 years into future budgets as Harper would have you believe.

What no one will tell you is that with Afghanistan as the priority, we compromise our Arctic sovereignty. There simply is not enough money to go around – or political will.

What about Afghanistan?

NATO is worse off now then they were in 2001 (it only took six years to defeat Hitler).

Think about it this way, when the Taliban were in power and Osama Bin Laden was quiet, and the West was doing business with the Taliban, how bad was it? Outside of international relations circles, most people had no idea who the Taliban were prior to 9/11.

Right now, Osama Bin Laden is operating with impunity in Pakistan. But, are we invading Pakistan? Why not, if stopping him is a vital strategic interest? It is not the Taliban who attacked us, it was al-Qaeda.

Osama is still operating, just like the good old days prior to 9/11 when he lived in Afghanistan. There is no change.

In quicksand, the more you struggle, the more you sink.

And while hell freezes over, the Arctic melts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 11:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.