What Karzai Must Tell Us

Those things make him as important to Canada as Canada is to his survival. What Karzai will say isn't secret. He will thank this country — as he should — for its collective help and personal sacrifices and he will repeat now familiar reasons why young men and women from across Canada should be willing to risk their lives in frontier Kandahar. By manning the front line against terrorism those soldiers are protecting Canada while creating in Afghanistan the conditions where freedom will flourish. Those are, of course, the same arguments made by Stephen Harper and are, in their disarming simplicity, emotionally seductive. They would be more persuasive if Karzai had not previously claimed so much progress. In a 2003 swing through North America, the Afghan leader admitted rebuilding his country would be a long and arduous task but prematurely dismissed the Taliban as politically and militarily spent. If he had been correct then, so many Canadians wouldn't be dying there now. While the federal government tries to mask it with jingoistic rhetoric, the reality that Afghanistan and this country now share is that the three Ds strategy of defence, diplomacy and development is failing. Sadly, proof is readily available to anyone willing to look beyond support-the-troops patriotism and the equally narrow, ethnocentric premise that forces of good and evil are locked in a struggle for civilization. Afghanistan's hard truth is that the variables of distant history, current politics and relentless economics are putting stability far over a distant horizon. Books will be written on those failures. But one reason each should be enough to persuade Canadians, if not a federal administration hungry for U.S. approval, to reconsider the mission. http://tinyurl.com/fvafg

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