Harper’S State Of Denial

Harper has a penchant for invidious political trickery, examples of which are declaring Quebec a nation within a nation, and most recently empanelling the Manley Commission to make recommendations on Afghanistan policy. Clearly, the objective here was to defuse partisan opposition by hiring a former Liberal cabinet minister to pre-empt the present Liberal Opposition. The problem for Harper is that the business of government is to govern and to bring Manley and his commission on board is a tacit admission his sparse cabinet was bankrupt of ideas. Furthermore, the recommendations made by the Manley commission are totally unrealistic. A thousand more NATO troops and a few more war toys are not going to solve Canada’s or NATO’s problems in dealing with Afghanistan. There are those who refuse to make linkage between Iraq and Afghanistan when it is obvious America’s interest in both these countries is strategic. Their presence has little to do with establishing democracy, nation building or liberation. Iraq is emerging not as a nation but as a US protectorate and its population becomes the new Palestinians. The US has established a permanent military presence there and a smaller version of the Pentagon in Baghdad known as the Green Zone and we can be assured Iraq’s national destiny is going to be rigorously circumscribed. Once pacified Afghanistan’s fate will no doubt be similar. The nasty little question for Canada and its NATO partners is: Are we prepared to be a mercenary force for American neo-imperialist ambitions? While we embellish our purpose by calling it nation building, the real purpose is evidentially colonizing. Absent from the arid political landscape surrounding Afghanistan is any meaningful discussion on whether a aggressive combat or aid/development approach is the best means to stabilize the country. When a more peaceful solution is advanced it somehow gets quickly squelched. Afghan President, Hamid Karzai has repeatedly petitioned his Western allies for a less combative approach to stabilizing his country but it remains a killing field for Taliban and Afghan civilians alike. Canada’s defence minister, Peter MacKay, flies off to Europe to give stern warnings to NATO allies that the existence of NATO is at stake on the issue of Afghanistan: however MacKay is on a fool’s mission as NATO countries have very legitimate concerns for staying out of the conflict, only one of which is that it is a corruption of the original purpose of NATO; nor does it take a great deal of political discernment to see MacKay’s arrival there is as errand boy for US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. It is easy to take pot shots at the ineffectual UN and its role in all of this but American unilateralism is in the habit of subverting the UN and using it to its own purposes. The Afghanistan undertaking would have much greater credibility if all NATO countries (including the US) removed themselves and Afghanistan made a UN protectorate. Anglo-American poet, W.H. Auden once stated, “Those to whom evil is done; Do evil in return.” Too many Western leaders, our own among them, are in denial. We are so utterly convinced we can do no evil and our motives are so purely altruistic. We then cry foul when evil is done to us, and continue to go about busily constructing our webs of self-deceit. Robert Billyard © 2008