Stephen Harper. Afghanistan. Maclean's Magazine. The Movement Towards a Fascist

The brassiest and most willing, presently, may be Maclean’s Magazine. Take its July 23 issue. Staring you in the face from its cover is an image of what we are pressured all the time by the private corporate press and media to believe is a natural and necessary condition: Canada at war in Afghanistan. What we are pressured to believe is a lie and a fraud. The caption on the front cover bearing the face of a Canadian soldier reads: “Afghanistan: Reason for Hope”. We know that has to be false because Maclean’s is about hypocrisy, about, that is, a pious seriousness that leads readers into minefields of falsehood. Look at the five page feature by a self-described “professor”, one of the Harper flacks at the once-distinguished Royal Military College in Kingston. A few Canadians still hold out at RMC, so that lunch table groupings – to say nothing of cocktail party gossip – must be a study. The fawners on U.S., lawless, brutal expansionism, like Sean M. Maloney, the “professor” of the Maclean’s feature story, must find themselves uncomfortable when among their Canadian-centred colleagues. Lies and cover-up and faked news are what Maclean’s seems to be about now – “for the cause”. Glance, just for instance, at the picture of a “gray-beard” Afghan receiving a box of school supplies “outside Kandahar city” from a nice, uniformed Canadian soldier. (“Winning in Afghanistan”, p. 23) The soldier is passing a rather large box to the Afghan. The box has been prepared for the photo, doubtless a posed little fraud. The box is half-empty, a box of crayons in view on top. “See [it says implicitly] things for the children”. The fakery gets worse. The soldier is not only passing the box to the Afghan. The two men are – try it yourself – as close to holding hands as is possible, their thumbs entwined and the Afghan’s forefinger covering the fingers of the Canadian. Touching. As a fake photo it should win a prize. Did “scholar”, “professor” Sean M. Baloney of Royal Military College set up the shot, being true to the “new scholarship” under the Harper regime? Whatever, we can see Maclean’s pushing photo opportunity into photo opportunism. Meanwhile Maclean’s doesn’t tell readers things they should know: Canadians don’t like, don’t want the war. The Afghanistan war was begun by the invasion of a totally unthreatening, small country. The U.S. invasion failed to secure U.N. Security Council authorization. The invasion of Afghanistan was illegal under international law. In fact, the Afghanistan government, following international law, tried to negotiate with the U.S. over Osama bin Laden’s extradition. The U.S., instead, slammed the door shut and opened fire. The result has been a false war, thousands (and mounting) of dead, innocent Afghans in an on-going war of U.S. expansion in which Stephen Harper and U.S. poster boy, General Rick Hillier, prostitute themselves for U.S. policy. Who is really fighting in Afghanistan? Are “Canadian forces” really there? U.S. forces, called U.S. forces are there – in thousands. NATO forces ( U.S.-controlled forces in disguise) are there. Canadian forces (Colonial troops fighting for the U.S. Master) are there. The war in Afhghanistan is not – except as a sham – an “international effort”. What does the “U.S. Master” want? Pressingly, the U.S. Master wants oil, access to oil, unimpeded delivery lines for oil. That’s just one aspect. The history of Afghanistan has been one in which India, Persia, Russia, and Britain – to name only some countries – tried over a few centuries to gain control of the country. The U.S. lunge at Afghanistan is not new. As a geopolitical holding, as a natural fortress, as a trade-lines place Afghanistan is covetted by imperial powers. The irony is painful of the 1980s Russian intervention there, which caused the U.S. to ally with the (hated?) Taliban and with any brutal warlord – and which saw the U.S. encouraging and bolstering Muslim fundamentalism. The Russians entered to support a progressive government that, to quote Linda McQuaig, had instituted reforms which included “a ban on polygamy, programs promoting literacy and education for women and a constitutional guarantee of women’s rights…. [And] Afghan women were freed from wearing the burka”. (Holding the Bully’s Coat, p. 101) The U.S. threw in mountains of weaponry and every other support they could manage to destroy the reform government, rid Afghanistan of Russia, and plant the U.S. in the centre of what is now a corrupt government whose legislators are murderous, reactionary, corrupt, thieving warlords. Unsurprisingly, the demented U.S. action has Afghanistan at war to rid itself of the invading foreigner. To that crude, lawless, U.S. imperial adventure in Afghanistan, the Stephen Harper government dedicates the lives of innocent (though indoctrinated) professional Canadian soldiers. For doing that, Stephen Harper should be (figureatively speaking) stripped bare and publicly horse-whipped in Confederation Square. That means Canadians should reject every Harper policy and should show open, public contempt for his person. Back to the stooge sheet, Maclean’s on Afghanistan. Andrew Potter’s column: “Support the troops but not the war? Sheer hypocrisy” is, itself, a giant exercise in hypocrisy. Poor Andrew Potter. Like many a fine, young Canadian, he wants a life in decent journalism, a place to work well, to hone his talents, to matter, and to earn his daily bread. There are few such places in Canada because our press/media are mostly owned by vast monopolies which are – largely – unscrupulous, colonial, anti-Canadian, greed-driven private corporations. Potter likes to play with language (and minds) – to see into and through mass consciousness. Good. The key question in his July 23 column is this: “Does it make any sense to support the troops and not the [Afghanistan] mission itself?” To obfuscate (and please his “stooge sheet” editor?) Potter goes into a fake logic game which concludes that when at war “if you are not fighting to win then you are fighting to lose”. If we don’t “win” in Afghansistan, he is saying, “we lose there”. Nonsense, of course. The lies of the Harper government, Potter declares, are told ”to minimize division and enable competing factions to at least try to work together”. Nonsense again. First, it makes perfect sense to “support the troops”; that is, to believe they are ours, to believe they are good, and to believe that GIVEN GOOD LEADERSHIP they will serve Canada well. NOT to support “the mission itself” is to say the Canadian military leadership is lousy and fraudulent and sell-out (Harper, Hillier, Gordon O’Connor and their fellow wrong-doers.) That is a perfectly reasonable position. In the Afghanistan situation, we Canadians in Canada should not be fighting to win or lose. Politically Canadians should be trying to protect “our” troops from their enemies – Harper, Hillier, Gordon O’Connor, the Taliban, and other enemies, until “our” troops can be returned to Canada. If we don’t “win” in Afghanistan (in Potter’s language) we don’t succeed in making the U.S. permanently dominant there. Is making the U.S. permanently dominant in Afghanistan “to win”? If we “lose” (in Potter’s language) we get out of Afghanistan and let the Afghan people decide their future (which we can help by genuine humanitarian aid). Is that really “to lose”? If, indeed, U.S., NATO, and Canadian war money spent already in Afghanistan had been spent on aid, construction, and humanitarian work, Afghanistan would be a far, far freer and more hopeful place than it is now. Canada is helping to murder Afghanistan. The lies of the Harper government are told in order to continue the slaughter by Canadians of the innocent and of others we have no right to condemn to death by warfare. The lies of the Harper government are told in order to continue the slaughter of innocent (but indoctrinated) professional Canadian soldiers. Potter’s division of what it is to win and what it is to lose, I suggest, is pure, ugly, murderous falsehood. The lies of the Harper government are not told “to minimize division and enable competing factions to at least try to work together”. The lies are told to support U.S. lawless violence and to hide the truth from Canadians. Andrew Potter writes capricious nonsense in aid of a continuing, obscene slaughter. Shame. One can only hope he will see the painful grotesqueness of his support for U.S. imperial murder and will leave Maclean’s for - perhaps a noble life in opposition to everything Stephen Harper stands for. Wait for his announcement. In the meantime, Stephen Harper and Maclean’s will go on moving Canada towards the condition of a fascist state. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on July 30, 2007]

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Stephen Harper. Afghanistan. Maclean's Magazine. The Movement Towards A Fascist

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