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A hard ass is somtimes a complement. Certainly a political leader might think so. So where's the beef, and what meaningless incedent will the media pick up on next?
Re update. LFP is the pot calling the kettle black ass. Everyone spins, and LFP is aften no exception.
We don't hide the fact that we are biased on many issues. At least we admit it! e.g. We are very concerned about our aggressive level of military committment in Afghanistan and to the Americans. Note our new sidebar icon to war casualities. We are concerned that we will become a US lacky country. Biased ? You betcha!
LFP, who would you suggest that Canada align itself with on the international scene? If your choice is noone, then who would you think will support us when Canada get crapped on?
Canada at one time was a Country in the western world that could be counted on to be independent and fairly neutral despite our bed buddy, the US. That has changed. Is this change good? We at LFP think not. We were once peacekeepers who could be counted on to assist in negotiating more lasting peace in conflicts even terrorist conflicts like the PLO in the middle east. No more.
Just for interest LFP when was this magic time of which you speak when Canada stood alone as an independent and fairly neutral party.
Was it before WWI? Nope we were part of the Empire then
How 'bout WWI? Nope still part of the Empire
Cold War? Nope we were part of NATO and Norad
Korean conflict? Nope worked with US and Britain then
Suez? Nope sided with US against Britain, first time we really stood up against Britain and it was with the US (to avoid the USSR coming in on the side of Egypt by the way)
I suppose there were a couple years with Dief the Chief, and perhaps during about half the Trudeau era (the other half he was too busy with domestic policy to even pretend to have much of a foreign policy). Eventually Trudeau so starved the military that we could barely generate enough peacekeepers to keep an eye on Cyprus and the Golan at the same time?????
So what you are saying is you pine for about 5 years in the mid seventies when the extra troops from the Cold War were available before Trudeau united and gutted the forces and we still had a tiny bit of political will. As for the rest of the history of the country we have stood strongly aligned with our allies (first the Commonwealth then NATO) and have been pretty serious about taking sides.
Even if you are right (I don't have the desire to research it though) why don't we Canadians learn from our mistakes. Generally most Canadians especially of my generation have viewed our Canadian military as not the aggresive gung ho, hurrahhh US marine types but rather the blue beret bearing image we generally identify with Canadians in uniform. Irrespective that is being totally changed by the George Bush emulating Harperites even to the point that the Conservative Government now recognizes that the ongoing deaths of young Canadians halfway around the world is dangerous and just cause for them to muzzle potentially damaging press reports of flags always at half mast and flag draped coffins coming home just like Bushites did when they clamped down on their press.
I notice you did not respond to previous post though...http://www.kimrichter.com/Blog/2006/04/
another-point-of-view-on-afghanistan.html How come this writer had facts and figures that you should find comforting. lol
I still do like your prodding irrespective Blair. everyone has a right to their opinion even if I don't agree with them or you.
LFP,
To be honest I never bothered to read the Eric Margolis piece as his articles have grown to bore me. He is a revisionist with a very interesting view of history that I am not terribly fond of. He is an apologist for Syrian dictators and Chechen "freedom fighters" even as they go about slaughtering innocent women and children.
Now that you suggest I read the article I find the page is not available. I'll try again another time and get back to you.
Blair
Revisionism is all in the eye of the beholder. While I don't agree with all he says I did see the sense in some things. For instance consideration early on of negotiation with the moderate taliban ( i assume there is some, heck there are a few left in the Conservative party too!) rather than essentially dealing with drug and war lords seems very logical to me. Makes me wonder why we sided with the underbelly of graft and crime. Could it have been feasible and saved some lives especially Canadians? We may never know. The sad thing is that I am concerned and hope that an end of hostilities will come in Afghanistan at some time. However the American track record in doing so after invading/helping countries has not been stellar to say the least.
www.kimrichter.com/Blog/2006/04/another-point-of-
view-on-afghanistan.html
Above link should work!
Go to federal politics archive on side bar it should be 4th down for review. Look forward to your comments on his Blair.
LFP,
The web site worked this morning and now that I can read the report I am amazed at what I read....maybe we should ask the Taliban to come rule Canada they sound so cuddly and nice. But seriously, EM colours the article and peppers it with minor innacuracies and misleading statements that makes it supremely challenging to review...primarily because I don’t have enough time to counter his MANY instances where he apologizes for evil, adjusts history to match his worldview and misleads.
Since I don’t have a full access to references I’ll stick to easily addressed ideas. As you will see below I simply do not have enough time to debunk the entire article but will start with an easy paragraph and see how we do, EM wrote:
“Taliban’s rule was extremely harsh; its leaders were backwards hillbillies. Because the communists had infiltrated the nation in the 1970’’s through the education system –– particularly female education –– Taliban shut down many schools for girls, oppressed minority Hazaras, whom Taliban considered heretics, and, in an act of supreme idiocy, blew up Buddhist idols.
1) By equating the Taliban with hillbillies he tries to reduce their culpability for their actions...after all they were only “hillbillies”. Think of this as EM's "diminished capacity" defence for the Taliban. Next thing he'll point out that a bad toothache made Mullah Omar cranky which helps explain his edict to stone teachers who taught girls to read in the privacy of their homes.
2) The communists didn’t get into power until 1978 and the USSR withdrew in 1989. The last vestige of ommunist government fell in 1992. While technically that puts them in power in the 1970's EM implies that they were there much longer.
3) The Taliban didn’t ban schools for women because of communists in the system, they did so because of a combination of culture and what I am assured is a mis-interpretation of the Koran. To quote the Wikipedia: “Taliban authorities enforced a particularly strict version of sharia, or Islamic law. Women were not allowed to work, save in health care, or to attend school. A stringent interpretation of the Islamic dress code, or hijab, was enforced; women were not to leave the house without a burqa. Men were required to grow beards and to avoid Western-style haircuts or dress. Cinemas were closed and music was banned. Theft was punished by the amputation of a hand, rape and murder by public execution. Adulterers were stoned to death. In Kabul, punishments were carried out in front of crowds in the former Kabul soccer stadium.”
4) EM says that the Taliban “oppressed” the Hazaras. An interesting choice of words since the Wikipedia has a quote on the subject “The policy of the Taliban is to exterminate the Hazaras." Maulawi Mohammed Hanif, Taliban Commander. Admittedly genocide is a type of oppression but I might have chosen a harsher word myself unless I was trying to sugarcoat an atrocity of course.
5) Regarding the destruction of the Buddist idols, that wasn’t “an act of supreme idiocy” it was the standard policy of the Taliban like banning the flying of kites, the listening to taped music, or the viewing of television. By calling it “idocy” EM can pretend that it was a mistake or a one-off event and thus reduces the culpability of the perpetrators.
Please re-read the words above, that is a single paragraph from the story. Most of the other paragraphs can be treated in a similar manner. Put simply, the Margolis piece is a white-wash, he neglects 2000 years of history and blames all the wrongs on the less than 14 years the communists were in charge. He treats Afghans like a homogeneous bunch when it is a tribal nation with several major cultural groups that have competed for power and resources since before Western civilization. He minimizes the atrocities of the Taliban while villainizing their enemies, his history is spotty and his references are woeful....kinda reminds me why I stopped reading him in the first place.
If you don’t like the Canadian presence in Afghanistan there are so many better writers and historians upon whom to rely than EM. As a famous gent once said, don't build a house on a foundation of sand.
LFP, I was in Costco the other day, and a woman dressed fully in black with only her eyes exposed, passed by following her husband. He was about five feet or so ahead, and while she spoke to him he paid no visible attention. I was very moved by this, and thought to myself what a horrible experience it must be to be a woman in some parts of the world.
One might say the above is a minor point within a larger picture, and has no relationship to our part in the peace keeping, but it's not so. It's the tip of an ugly iceberg that contains samples of just about every example of man's uncivilized behaviour all through history. I personally would feel shame as a Canadian, if we did not stand alongside other civilized nations and use the necessary force to stop this mutation of the Islamic religion from growing ever larger.
Please correct the above author to methinks. My daughter removed the cookies from my computer on Monday, and somehow I became "anonymous". Someone might explain how this could happen. Sorry anon.
The question you have to ask is can this war in Afghanistan be won? What is the definition of winning and when? What other shining examples of success can be demonstrated where cultural change is forced upon a nation. Can our western values be forced upon what you consider uncivilized behavior? Will the muslim fundamentalist driven countries see this as more expanding western imperialism and a war against their culture and religious beliefs? Did we invade Afghanistan to change their culture? I think not, but it has now become a continued justification, hasn't it? What will the ultimate cost be to all, not just monetarily? Are there better ways to effect change? Can change take hold by force almost overnight? The analogy that comes to my mind are the ramifications of a long lost isolated Brazilian rainforest tribe being instantly forcied to live and cope in urban Rio De Janeiro. Consider this. I am still not convinced that the correct answer is what the US driven NATO group, including Canada now,is doing. There must be a better way. I hope you are right and I am proven wrong. I sincerely hope I don't have to say, I told you so.
LFP, much of your feelings are felt by most Canadians, including myself. "Winning and when...." for example. The same applies to cultural change, but that part of it is confused because this is the third fourth or even fifth change being introduced in Afgahnistan in very recent times (Communism, the Russian invasion, the Taliban takeover, NATO involvement). If we could turn back the clock and return Afghanistan back to what it was before it was interfered with, the world would be a much safer place today. In the meantime, I guess what concerns most everyone is who will move in and influence the next form that Afghanistan becomes. Will it be Taliban, Iranian, or democratic in it's attitude and relations with the rest of the world?
A disturbing problem on our planet today is that we have cultures that are far outdated and primitive alongside our own (western). Unfortunately they have access to the same weaponry and communications that modern nations have, but their cultures simply don't have the same restraints on the uses of these things. Religeous fanatisism adds more fuel to the fires.
Well said Methinks. CBC has an ecellent link about Afghanistan at,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/backgroun...stan/
index.html
It says what you said about the 'primitive' country. It says,"A United Nations report in February 2005, concluded that Afghanistan remains one of the world's least developed countries. It ranked 173rd out of 178 countries surveyed – beating five states in sub-Saharan Africa." Can democracy really take hold there in the short term?
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