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What are we doing in Afghanistan?
Jim Bender Woodstock
Wednesday September 20, 2006
I find it hard to believe that the issue of
Afghanistan will come to any quick end as NATO and Stephen Harper would have us
believe.
Twenty years ago, when Russia was still a force to be reckoned with, the Russian
government sent 250,000 troops into this country in an attempt to tame the
fundamentalist component, the emerging Taliban.
At the time, Russia was the head of the largest military establishment on earth.
The mass of their countries’ budget was spent on military expenditures,
procuring and manufacturing the most powerful weapons on earth, while Canada
spent her money on national projects and social safety nets.
The Russians were met with zero success and in fact, the Russian Army claims to
have lost more than 15,000 men during this eight-year war with Afghanistan.
Mikhail Gorbachev, under immense international and American pressure, withdrew
the troops and walked away, realizing that Russia could never fight this type of
war as long as the military targets they sought wore the clothes of civilians
and fought under the banner of religion. It was a lost war and still is today.
Gorbachev must be smiling to himself that one western leader, Harper, believes
he can win the fight with no equipment, few soldiers and very little support
from his own people. Canada has a military smaller than
the Russian contingency that was annilhiated in that country.
How we expect 2,500 soldiers, with 15 tanks (of ancient design...so weak that
you could shoot a paper spitball through their armour) to tame this nation is
beyond me. Every mother and father we kill over there will leave a family behind
them that will grow into the terrorists of tomorrow.
Maybe we will stop them dead in their tracks this year, but as soon as their
children learn to pick up a rock or a gun, we will be in trouble. And the cycle
begins again and our children will be off to fight the good fight.
Perhaps Canada’s military prowess exceeds that of the massive Russian Army,
but I highly doubt it. We’ve spent zero on maintaining the military and our
equipment hails mostly from a long forgotten war in Korea.
Our security here will never change, even if we kill every Afghanistan fighter
on earth. There will always be a new crop of people ready to come out and fight
against us.
For us to believe we are winning this fight, we have to lie to ourselves and our
leaders must lie to the soldiers, making them believe they are safe in the
field, when in fact they are just targets waiting to happen.
The majority of Canadians do not agree with the nature of the mission in
Afghanistan, but we do support our people in the field, in their mission to at
least stay alive. We do not oppose our soldiers, just the plan which they’ve
come to represent.
It’s time to re-examine this issue in full. Perhaps a national vote on the
issue would be prudent. Mr. Harper did not gain the right to go it alone over
there, so why are we there.