Editor's Notes
Friday, November 20, 2009
True North Perspective
Vol. 4, No. 52 (203)
By Geoffrey Dow, Managing Editor
True North Perspective
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For a Canadian, there is a miserable irony in the fact that "our" ostensible ally, Afghanistan's "re-elected" President, Hamid Karzai, was sworn into his second term of office during the same week that a former Canadian diplomat testified that every Afghani captured by Canadian troops and subsequently turned over to Afghan authorities, was tortured.1.
No, not some of them, not most of them. All of them.
A senior diplomat posted to Afghanistan in 2006, Richard Colvin said that he wrote reports to senior civil servants only to be ignored until he was told to stop putting things in writing (see "All Afghan prisoners likely to be tortured" in this edition of True North Perspective). Naturally, the federal government denies all and appears to be launching the sort of smear campaign it has long seen as a weapon of first resort when confronted by truths it would rather the rest of us don't see (see this New York Times report on last year's firing of the former president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for a particularly salutary example), but to this observer at least, the allegations come as no surprise.
As other stories in this edition serve to show, Hamid Karzai's government, installed by the United States and allies such as Canada and Great Britain following the defeat of the noxious Taliban regime, is little better than the mullahs "we" chased into the mountains dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan, begging the question of why we are there at all.
The courageous former Afghan MP Malalai Joya argues that, despite Western rhetoric, life for women in Afghanistan is no better now than it was under the Taliban and that the best thing "we" could do would be to withdraw, now.
Similarly, Robert Naiman points out that for every dollar the United States spends on paying American contractors in Afghanistan, it spends a single penny hiring Afghanis. (See "Our corrupt occupation of Afghanistan".) Even worse, "a minimum of 10 per cent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts in Afghanistan consists of protection payments to insurgents" (the italics are mine).
Think about that, just for a minute.
The most powerful military force in the history of the world has now occupied one of the poorest countries on the planet more than twice as long as the allies occupied West Germany following World War II (and longer than it took to win that war itself) — and it is paying protection money to its own enemies.
Now think about that again.
And — if you are American, or Canadian or British ... if your nation is in any way involved in this travesty of brutality and corruption, torture and destruction — ask yourself the morally vital questions: What in the world are we doing there? Why are my soldiers killing and being killed in that far-off land?
Some Canadians, I suspect, take comfort in our Government's promise that our troops will be coming home in 2011 (though that same government from time to time sends out small trial balloons in hopes that we can keep some sort of presence Over There, presumably so that some of our own "defence" industry players can bid on contracts with the U.S. — or maybe just for the illusion that we are one of the Big Boys on the world stage as well). But I don't see that as much comfort at all. If our men and women in uniform can be called home from a war arbitrarily, without any fear of repurcussions at home, I must repeat the question: Why did we send them there in the first place?2.
And that, in case you were wondering, is the point of this editorial and the reason this edition of True North Perspective is once again flooded with repetitive and depressing stories coming from that ancient "graveyard of empires". Because those of us in Canada and the United States, among other countries, are supporting the soldiers handing over prisoners to be tortured; we are paying for the rich countries' version of road-side bombs (sorry — "improvised explosive devices"), the un-manned drones famous for blowing up wedding parties; because our soldiers are killing and being killed for reasons that have nothing to do with defence and everything to do with ... well, whatever it is that leads our governments to convince us we need to send our soldiers to war in far-off lands.
If Canada is going to bring our troops home in 2011 whether or not the war is won, then there is no need for them to be there now. Decency and morality, and the honour of our nation are at stake, not to mention the lives of our courageous men and women in uniform, and the real flesh and blood Aghani men and women as well.
War is not a game and our own souls hang in the balance if we allow ourselves and our governments to treat it as such.
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Notes:
1. I know, I know. In these times, when scabs are called "replacement workers" and mercenaries are "private military contractors", I am supposed to refer to torture as "enhanced enterrogation" or something similar, but I tired of things being defined out of existence.
2. Yes, "to defeat the Taliban and get Osama bin Laden" is one answer and, admitedly, one to which I reluctantly subscribed back in the fall of 2001. But the Taliban government was destroyed almost immediately, "we" handed power over to drug-dealers and thugs who — no surprise — have been too busy lining their own pockets to bother building a proper civil society. Since the result has been te imposition of a an equally brutal and even more corrupt regime on the people of Afghanistan, along with a massive increase in the amount of heroin coming out of that country, I can only offer my apologies and regrets for having been sucked in by the militant propaganda following the shock of seeing the Twin Towers come down on September 11, 2001.
20 November 2009 — Return to cover.
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