British MP: Canada Complicit In Iraq War

Operation Athena is part of the International Security Assistance Force. We are not there as peace keepers who keep apart two warring sides, we are there to ensure that people are not killed by ex-Taliban, bandits, warlords, Al Queda terrorists and sypathizers and others opposed to the democratic government. We are there to stop them, arrest them and kill them. We are there to provide security to people helping to rebuild a country that was cast back into the stone age by years of war with the US/Soviets and civil war. Nobody said this was traditional peacekeeping. We are not neutral in this (especially since we helped toss out the Taliban). We never claimed to be. This does not make our tradition of peacekeeping a lie, it shows that we do not shirk from what is necessary to keep a new peace in a country accustomed to nothing but war for over a generation.

Galloway doesn't see a difference between Iraq and Afghanistan. Too bad for him. Fortunately, most people do.

"That doesn't sound very much like neutrality to me," Galloway said to a receptive crowd. "You should raise the demand to end the Canadian occupation of Afghanistan."

I have to agree Micheal. MP Galloway earned my favour because he stood up to the US Congress with facts. But here he has his facts wrong. Afghanistan is a war. There is no neutrality in War.

And it's not 'Canada' in Afghnanistan, it's NATO. It's not about peacekeeping, it's about removing the Taliban from power and returning Afghanistan to the lush country it once was. There aren't two sides to keep apart.



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"If you must kill a man, it costs you nothing to be polite about it." Winston Churchill

Quite right that Canada has NEVER been neutral and never has claimed to be-except by some commentators who like to think warm fuzzy thoughts about their country. The British MP is right on, except for his facts. Even the NDP hasn't said to get out of Afghanistan, it's ironic that the most anti war politician who 'walks the walk' is from Britain, NOT Canada.
It's a little squeamish though to claim that it's not Canada but NATO in Afghanistan. There are provisions under NATO where a country can avoid sending troops, scandinavian countries have them, and of course we could have 'just said no' and faced the repercussions.
It's also true that we are no longer peacekeepers and haven't been for awhile. In fact, even the United Nations can't claime to be so, just look at Haiti. However, for the warmongers who actually think we are doing god's work and 'restoring' Afghanistan to it's former glory, I have one question: when are we going to attack Indonesia? (Oh, I forgot, we LIKE those murderers).

And lets not forget that we replaced the murderous Taliban with angelic drug-and-war lords who have put Afghanistan back on the map as the world's #1 narco state.

Oh and that annoying little tidbit that the Taliban are actually being "elected" back into power as well.

I suppose you preferred it when half the country was run by the Taliban then? When women couldn't go to school or work. When any religion other than Islam was persecuted to the extent that they blew up historical icons. Torture was really rampant and the country was tearing itself apart in a civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. A place where Al Queda was provided training facilities and planned the 9/11 attacks. <br />
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Though the transition has been slow, it is one heck of a lot better than what was there before. Yes, rural populations returned to opium (pre Taliban this was what they grew in large quantities as well) - they poor need to eat and they can trade poppies for money and money for food, and the warlords know that this is the best source of money to be had. That definitely needs to change - which is part (not all, but part) of the reason why the International forces are starting to move out of Kabul. The capital is now fairly secure and the Canadians and others are moving to various places in Afghanistan to provide security for developments in additional areas. If the Taliban had any good points, it was their repression of drugs - of course they killed anyone who had drugs so maybe it was a bit severe (maybe Emery should start selling to the Taliban, and we'll see how many of you cry out about injustice then). <br />
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Anon, as for your statement "that annoying little tidbit that the Taliban are actually being "elected" back into power", I will assume you are referring to the fact that a former Taliban commander is one of the candidates. From the link below - "Others said they voted for another candidate, reportedly a former Taliban commander, simply because they recognized his picture".<br />
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<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/09/17/afghan.elections/">http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/09/17/afghan.elections/</a><br />
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I don't think any of the counting has been completed yet, so I don't know where you get the idea that they he has actually being elected. The Taliban are not running in the election, anon, they are hiding in caves. That a former commander renounced the Taliban and is running for election is not all that disturbing - if you excluded every person who committed violence from running for office in Afghanistan, you'd eliminate the last 4 generations from candidacy. And I don't think they fancy voting for 10 year olds. <br />
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Now I particularly liked Marcarc's comment that "The British MP is right on, except for his facts". If I may paraphrase: you love Galloway's viewpoint, except it wasn't based in reality. Well, I agree with the latter, anyway. <br />
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So tell this "warmonger" exactly what the path is to your obvious self righteous morality. Why do you think we should have opted out of Afghanistan exactly? What would you have done instead? What would you like to do now that would actually be a solution? Pull out the troops? And then what... let them fend for themselves? What actual, tangible, credible solution can you offer? What hope to these people? What solution that can assist the people while suppressing the terrorists? Anything? <br />
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I'll tell you mine: If anything, we should send more troops, more NGO's, more resources there. The faster we can build that country up, the better off their people will be. We need to establish infrastructure and education. Assist the rural farmers so that they can grow real crops, not poppies and protect them from the warlords and the Taliban. This requires not just troops (which are most definitely required for protection) but also engineers, teachers, doctors, and even the odd lawyer. They have lived with 30+ years of continuous war. If anyone in this world needs help, it is them. If anyone needs protection from demagogues and ideological tyranny, it is Afghanistan. <br />
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As for who is next, Indonesia is way down the list. The Sudan, or Mozambique rank far higher in terms of the number of people affected within the country, and the implications to foreign nations. Somalia is another place crying out for intervention. <br />
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It's really great to be such an anti-war spokesman and pick out all the negatives of what is happening. It is unfortunate that you don't have a solution yourself though... but maybe that is a poor assumption on my part. If there was ever a friendly podium from which offer your anti-war solution, Vive would be it - so fire away. <br />

Sorry, above was me.

The USA funded the Taliban in the first fucking place.
Its a god damn joke.
Our forces were over there doing operations during the invasion as well. Operation Athena only actually controls Kabul and Kandahar. The rest of coutry is divided up between narco-warlords, half of whom were in power when the Taliban ruled, they just switched sides during the invasion.
We should not be there either. Its a fucking joke. It would be laughable if it wasnt so tragic.

Also, we will never build it up. Thats some nice talk to make us feel good about he invasion. It will remain divded and ruled by Warlords, as it always has been. If if was stable, then we would have to leave, and the Hegenomy would no longer be in place. You have to understand the bigger picture. Iraq and Afganistan are not meant to recover and grow and prosper. They are meant to remain violent in order to have an excuse for our involvment. Recovery and prosperity are not part of the New American Century Plan.

Of course that's always the 'war side'-that opposers to the war actually have no plan. These things are all hypothetical since we are not making any of the decisions. If YOU were in charge I think we'd have far less disagreement, although I fail to see the wisdom in bombing a place to oblivion only to try to rebuild it. Not to mention that NATO wasn't even in charge, americans were. Two days after 9/11 Bush ordered all red cross and international aid organizations out of Afghanistan. This in itself costs thousands of lives. There is NO evidence that this hurt the Taliban, just like sanctions on Iraq didn't hurt Saddam and sanctions on Cuba didn't hurt Castro. It hurt the people-but not the rulers. It's always interesting to listen to such detail about what is going on in Afghanistan by people who have never set foot on it.

Read some history, Indonesian generals were responsible for FAR more atrocities than Sudan, it was responsible for genocide which very nearly succeeded except for a small group of canadians. There is a reason that Indonesia is 'far down the list' and that is because canadian companies have reaped huge benefits from the murderous family that rules Indonesia.

Ironically, the war argument has a morbid point in its favour: while we argue 'what do you tell those who are suffering', the pro war side doesn't have to worry about those affected complaining- they're all dead. That makes about as much sense as a wife abuser asking what he can do to help her.

If we were in lala land then I'd agree that we should be hopping all over the world solving all its problems, but consider this, one quarter of all canadians live in poverty. Our unemployment rate has been 10% for two decades, and our participation rate is only about 70%. We have our own genocide story and natives still live in poverty as bad as any third world country, we even deny them the right to govern themselves, even though our system has been catastrophic on their lives and culture. We have been censured each year by the United Nations for our treatment of the Lubicon. So to claim that we are somehow the best arbiters of 'what people need' is pretty egotistical without foundation.

However, for those who really need to ignore the plank in their own eye there is this, the Taliban had serious enemies within their own population. If we hadn't stocked them so well with arms revolution would happen earlier, however, it would come. Ironically, after the first gulf war Iraqi generals wanted access to captured weapons to get rid of Saddam themselves but the states refused, George Sr. said they were better off dealing with 'the devil you know', rather than after a coup when the people may actually have taken power.

The joke is on us if we Canadians don't think we are there ONLY to re-enforce the American's position in that country. We are infact allowing the USA more resources to invade Iraq. They entrusted Canada to keep things going for them while they are busy in another war of "democracy". I believe it's called monitoring the scene of the crime.

Blah, blah, blah... Still waiting for that plan. Heard a bunch of the same old tired story from you and the Beav, but not much else. How long are you guys going to replay history before you come to the table with a viable alternative? Saying if we didn't do this or that, then things would be a utopian paradise doesn't wash. We have the situation today and we can't change history. What do we do? In your view it looks like we rehash history until everyone is dead.

From your last few statements, I'd assume you want a full pull out and we shut our borders until we solve all our internal problems (now that is assumption, but in lieu of any actual plan in your notes, I'll take what I can get). I'd say that you need some new unemployment and poverty figures that mesh with reality, but I won't quibble (1 in 4 in poverty, eh? - I think any Afghani would trade their wealth for that kind of poverty). Your "plan" as it were would be to let everyone sort out their own issues, and we should deal with our own first. That's pretty enlightened (if we thought we saw genocide before, I can hardly wait to see what happens in that world). Hopefully the Beav can add some more expletives to spice up such a narrow view of the world.

Oh yeah... because that extra thousand guys in Iraq made all the difference. I guess it is closer to 8 thousand if you count the rest of NATO. Now instead of 125 thousand, they have 133 thousand troops for Iraq. More or less... after the first 100K, you begin to lose track.

Now if we could dump 20 thousand or so along the Pakistani border, you might have a case. Then the US special forces deployed there could go to Iraq.

More netural than Britain.

Onward Christian SOLIDERS!!!

YES!!! attack Beaver. The war is a joke.

No war for oil profits, No war for ISRAEl!!!